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Space scientists say their discoveries about Saturn's moon Enceladus are stunning, if just a little baffling.
Using the instrument-packed Cassini probe, they have confirmed that the 500km-wide world has an atmosphere.
They have also seen a "hotspot" at the icy moon's south pole, which is riven with cracks dubbed "tiger stripes".
But the US and European scientists told a London meeting they could not yet explain fully the energetic processes driving all the activity on Enceladus.
"There were signs from a long time ago that Enceladus was a strange moon," said Dr Carolyn Porco, leader of Cassini's imaging team, "but it is just so gratifying and fabulous to see all the results come together and clearly point to a specific region on the surface which seems to be the origin of a lot of that peculiarity."
High-resolution imagery shows the southern polar region to be relatively smooth - usually a good indicator of recent activity - but cut by a number of long, dominant cracks. These are the so-called tiger stripes.
They are about 130km long and roughly parallel to one another, spaced about 40km apart.
Cassini's composite infrared spectrometer shows the region to be much warmer than expected.
