At the centre of this image, captured by ESA’s Herschel space observatory, is a truly peculiar cosmic object: a star named IRAS 19312+1950.

Located over 12 000 light-years from us, this star has puzzled astronomers for many years because it shows conflicting signs of being both extremely old and extremely young.

Amateur astronomers have long kept an eye on AR Sco, thinking they were watching the flickering of a single variable star. But when they took more detailed observations last year, they saw entirely unexpected behavior and began a fruitful collaboration with professional astronomers to find out the answer.

Read the full story at Sky & Telescope