There are a number of star diamonds in the world – The Earth Star, the Golden Star, Star of the East, and the Polar Star, to name a few famous stones – but a diamond star is much more unusual.

Recently, astronomers discovered a white dwarf – a compressed former star – that is in effect the biggest diamond in the galaxy, comprising some 10 billion trillion carats. BPM 37093, known by the catchier name "Diamond Star Lucy," after the Beatles song, is 2/3 the size of the Earth, but weighs more than the sun.

Diamond stars are formed when a constellation uses up its nuclear fuel and dies off, leaving a planet-sized crystallized carbon nugget – an orbiting diamond. According to a Harvard University astrophysicist, grading the diamond star would require a jeweler's loupe the size of the sun.  

Diamond Star Lucy measures some 4000 km across and is 50 light years from Earth. In its heyday, it was a star as bright as the sun is today.

Astronomers believe that in about 5 billion years, our own sun will burn itself out and become a white dwarf – a gigantic floating diamond, just like Diamond Star Lucy.

I wonder if someday we will be able to reach it, it will effect the diamond industry and diamond prices.

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