This star is named Camelopardalis (which used to be what people called giraffes), and it's up by the North Celestial Pole. You can't actually see the star itself (it takes up about one pixel in the center of the image), but you can see a giant ring of gas that the star has coughed out. If your body was full of soot and carbon monoxide, you'd be coughing too.

Camelopardalis (which you can call U Cam if you want to be cool like NASA) is rare kind of star called a carbon star. It's a type of red giant that has more carbon in its atmosphere than oxygen, creating massive amount of carbon dioxide with enough carbon left over to form all kinds of other "sooty" compounds.

U Cam in particular is nearing the end of its life, and as helium begins to fuse in its core, the increase in energy output kicks out a huge shell of carbon-rich dust and gas. This process happens every few thousand years, but it's often a very irregular and unstable sort of thing, so we're lucky to get this perfectly spherical bubble to ogle over. It may not last long, though: U Cam is at the very end of its life, and at some point soon (perhaps within just a few hundred years), it'll blow off its outer layers, potentially forming a glorious planetary nebula as it fades away into a white dwarf.

NASA, via SSS