Hi GDR,
1/ Doesn't this mean that what we are now seeing is that star as it was at a time very shortly after the Big Bang?
Yes (on the order of several hundred million years after the BB)
2/ I also understood that there is an "event horizon" because of the expansion of the universe that has moved galaxies beyond our ability to perceive them. However here we have a star that has been here since nearly T=0 and we're still able to view it. Why is that?
We are seeing the "star" before the cosmological expansion carries it over the cosmological horizon. If we continue to observe it over time, we will see it receed and redden to the point that it fades from view.
3/ Using the penny on the balloon analogy shouldn't this mean that we are looking virtually all the way around the balloon, (the universe), and if we looked in another direction that we could see the same star very much closer?
No - even if the Universe is closed as in the balloon analogy, this is on a scale unimaginably larger than the distance to the "star", because of inflation. In an inflated closed universe, the observable universe is a tiny fraction of the whole universe.
Edited by cavediver, : No reason given.