Where Little Solar Systems Come From
Great story on Slashdot:
NASA astronomers held a press conference announcing that a new ultraviolet mosaic from NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer shows a speeding star named Mira that's leaving an enormous trail of "seeds" for new solar systems. Mira is traveling faster than a speeding bullet, and has a tail that's 13 light-years long and over 30,000 years old. The website has images and a replay of the teleconference.
Here's an artist's conception of Mira doing her stuff:
It's a real shooting star. It's a super-comet! How wonderful that our universe still has so many amazing new things to show us.