Comet Hartley 2 is an odd, dumbbell-shaped object that rotates as it tumbles along its orbit. One end spews carbon dioxide gas so violently that it regularly throws off chunks of ice as it travels around the sun every six and a half years or so.

The Hubble Space Telescope, which had been programmed to search for planets, has found 42 "oddball" blue stars in the Milky Way galaxy. These stars burn so brightly that they consume their fuel much faster than other stars. Though they are found in more abundance in more distant galaxies, the discovery of nearby blue stars presents a particular problem for standard long-age cosmologies.

Jupiter's moon Io may have a very short name, but it definitely has the highest volcanic activity of any object in the solar system. Littered with volcanoes, its unique surface sports a massive active volcano named Loki whose lava output exceeds that of all of earth's volcanoes put together.

Enceladus, a small moon that orbits in the E-ring of the planet Saturn, has provided a number of surprising astronomical discoveries in recent years. A new report shows it once again defying expectations. Researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory have found that it produces far more heat than they ever predicted.