What is this Kolob anyway?

I've had some ask me what Kolob is, and thought I can spend a few minutes explaining it.  Now, this isn't basic mormon knowledge here.  You're not going to learn about Kolob from the missionaries, as the church tends to shy away from this one, but lucky for me, I have a good understanding of it.

In simple terms, Kolob is the name of the star that is nearest to the planet God live's on.  I know you have even more questions now, so let me explain.  

The mormons believe that all men who are righteous members of the church and have done all expected of them, will have to opportunity to become a God in the next life.  As a God, they will create planets and people and be worshipped by his creations.  This is how the God they believe in got to his position.  This belief stems from its earliest teaching from Joseph Smith, and repeated by his successors.  Joseph Smith said:

"God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens!  That is the great secret..... It is the first principle of the Gospel to know for a certainty the Character of God, and to know... that he was once a man like us.... Here, then, is eternal life - to know the only wise and true God; and you have got to learn how to be Gods yourselves... the same as all Gods have done before you..."

-Joseph Smith Jr., "King Follet Discourse," Journal of Discourses, v. 6 pp.3-4, also in Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, pp. 345-346.

And to further expound on this:

"First, we believe that God is a being with a body in form like man's; that he possesses body, parts and passions; that in a word, God is an exalted, perfected man.  Second, we believe in a plurality of Gods.  Third, we believe that somewhere and some time in the ages to come, through development, through enlargement, through purification until perfection is attained, man at last may become like God - a God."

- LDS Historian and Apostle B.H. Roberts, The Mormon Doctrine of Deity: The Roberts-Van Der Donckt Discussion, p. 11

Given there are countless galaxies in our known Universe, it was always my understanding that the God I worshiped was the God of our entire galaxy, and that the other galaxies had a different God than ours.  It was some deep shit, and I thought fairly highly of myself knowing these great mysteries.  

So, anyway, our galactic God lives in a plane of existence in our own Milky Way, on a planet that orbits a star of it's own.  This star is called Kolob, and it is revealed in the mormon scripture, The Pearl of Great Price;

And I saw the stars, that they were very great, and that one of them was nearest unto the throne of God; and there were many great ones which were near unto it;

And the Lord said unto me: These are the governing ones; and the name of the great one is Kolob, because it is near unto me, for I am the Lord thy God...

And the Lord said unto me,... that Kolob was after the manner of the Lord, according to its times and seasons in the revolutions thereof; that one revolution was a day unto the Lord, after his manner of reckoning, it being one thousand years according to the time appointed unto that whereon thou standest.  This is the reckoning of the Lord's time, according to the reckoning of Kolob.

-The Pearl of Great Price, Book of Abraham, Ch 3, versus 2-4.

So, the planet which God lives on in our galaxy takes 1,000 earth years to make one (day) revolution on it's axis.  This is all based on the reckoning of time as God's planet orbits Kolob.

And that my friends is what Kolob is.