Today I had a little surprised as stars appeared around my mouse pointer and they remained. I was pretty sure I've seen those before so not too much to worry about, but... how to get rid of them?!

I knew that I just hit something on the keyboard, I just don't really know what the keystroke was. So I want to try that keystroke again and get rid of the stars... Only I have no clue what it is.

Going to the Gnome Preferences:

/usr/bin/ccsm

It appears on the first page for me.

It's called Show mouse. Looking into the settings of the feature, I see that the keyboard shortcut is:

Ctrl-Alt-K

I tried again and sure enough, that is enough to get the stars away and back and back. I guess I never used it since I tested way back when.