Fly over Ceres in this stunning NASA video

NASA is getting out there into our solar system more than ever these days, with the long survey of dwarf planet Ceres producing amazing images

Ceres is a massive object in the asteroid belt which floats through our Solar System between the planets of Mars and Jupiter. It's big enough to be labelled a dwarf planet with a diameter of 945 km. This pride of place in the belt has made it the source of much study over the years, with a special mission launched in 2007 under the name of Dawn.

The Dawn probe arrived in orbit around Ceres in March 2015 and it has completed extensive mapping since then. All of that work has resulted in the highest quality imagery ever gathered of the celestial body which NASA has now converted into a stunning video showing off the details of Ceres.

You can see all of the features of the surface of the planetoid, which is composed of rock and ice, making up one third of the total mass of the sprawling asteroid belt. The Dawn mission has been going for almost 9 years now and the machine will be retired soon - becoming a permanent satellite of Ceres as it loops in a high orbit for eternity.