NASA's Dawn spacecraft has taken the first image of the dwarf planet, Ceres.

The nine pixel wide image was taken from a distance of 740,000 miles (1.2 million km) from Ceres on Dec. 1 as part of the final calibration of Dawn's science camera. The unmanned probe is fast closing on the 590 mile (950 km) wide planetoid, which it will rendezvous with and orbit in March of next year.

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The photo showed Ceres is certainly round and true to form.

The spacecraft has two cameras: a visible and infrared mapping spectrometer capable of revealing surface minerals and a gamma ray and neutron spectrometer to categorize the elements that comprise the outer portion of the asteroid. Dawn is about to measure Ceres' gravity field.

Right now, Ceres is as bright as Venus as seen from Earth.

The Hubble Space Telescope captured the best image of Ceres in 2004, but NASA said Dawn can give much higher resolution photos of Ceres. Scientists said ice caps, ice volcanoes and clouds are expected to be revealed in March 2015 as Dawn goes into orbit around the first dwarf planet to be orbited by a satellite.

"Now, finally, we have a spacecraft on the verge of unveiling this mysterious, alien world. Soon it will reveal myriad secrets Ceres has held since the dawn of the solar system," says Marc Rayman, chief engineer and mission director of the Dawn mission at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

NASA's Dawn spacecraft was launched September 27, 2007 by a Delta II rocket from Space Launch Complex 17B at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

TagsNASA, Dawn Spacecraft, spacecraft, Vesta, Ceres, dwarf planet, space exploration, solar system, Hubble Space Telescope, dwarf planet Ceres