  We investigate the viability of a new type of compact star whose main
constituent is a Bose-Einstein condensate of charged pions. Several different
setups are considered, where a gas of charged leptons and neutrinos is also
present. The pionic equation of state is obtained from lattice QCD simulations
in the presence of an isospin chemical potential, and requires no modeling of
the nuclear force. The gravitationally bound configurations of these systems
are found by solving the Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkov equations. We discuss weak
decays within the pion condensed phase and elaborate on the generation
mechanism of such objects.
