  We discuss the serendipitous discovery of an extremely metal poor galaxy,
SDSS 0809+1729, classified as a star in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS).
The galaxy has a redshift z = 0.0441 and a B-band absolute magnitude M_B =
-17.1. With a metallicity of log(O/H)+12~7.44 or ~1/20 solar, this galaxy is
among the 10 most metal poor emission-line galaxies known. SDSS 0809+1729 is a
blue compact galaxy (BCG) with a stellar age of ~4.5 Myr, a star formation rate
of 0.18 Msun/yr, and a large gas-phase electron density ~367/cm^3. Similar
values of these parameters are common among other extremely metal poor
galaxies, including IZw18. SDSS 0809+1729 is, however, unusual among BCGs
because it lies in the same region of the luminosity-metallicity diagram as the
two lowest metallicity long duration gamma ray burst (GRB) hosts. For a given
B-band luminosity, both nearby GRB hosts and SDSS 0809+1729 have systematically
lower metallicities than dwarf irregulars, the majority of BCGs, and normal
star-forming galaxies. Because the star formation properties of SDSS 0809+1729
are similar to nearby long duration GRB hosts, SDSS 0809+1729 may be a
potential GRB host. Identification of larger samples of similar extremely metal
poor objects may provide important insights into the conditions required to
produce long duration GRBs.
