NASA’s Dawn spacecraft is currently on its way to the asteroid belt where it will rendezvous Ceres, its largest celestial body.

Ceres, also classified as a dwarf planet, has an average diameter of about 950 km (590 miles) making it comparable in scale to the U.S. state of Texas.

Dawn captured the first image of Ceres on December 1. At just 9 pixels in width, the tiny photo was taken at a distance of about 1.2 million kilometers (740,000 miles), roughly three times the distance between Earth and the moon. On January 13 Dawn observed the object for one hour, capturing images of roughly half its surface area, including an intriguing white spot.

The spacecraft is expected to deliver much higher resolution images as it flies ever closer to Ceres.

The $466 million Dawn mission launched by NASA in September 2007 aims to study not only the dwarf planet, but also protoplanet Vesta.

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