It's a forum software glitch
If you cut and paste things into the header, certain font characters don't "work," and will display as three asterisks. In this case I suspect some form of line feed or return.
Space/Science » in reply to What does the three asterisks *** after Galaxies mean?
If you cut and paste things into the header, certain font characters don't "work," and will display as three asterisks. In this case I suspect some form of line feed or return.