NASA shows what it's like to orbit the dwarf planet Ceres

Stargazers and space lovers can now get a glimpse of what it would be like to fly over the surface of a distant dwarf planet, thanks to a new NASA animation.Enceladus, Ceres closeups captured by NASA spacecraft

• Ceres's mysterious bright spots identified as common bath additive
• Dawn spacecraft enters orbit around dwarf planet Ceres

A short video released by NASA usesimages taken from the Dawn spacecraft tosimulatethe experience of orbiting the dwarf planet Ceres, the largest known object inthe mainasteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

The imagesweretaken between Augustand October 2015 from1,450kilometresabovethe dwarf planet's surface.

"The simulated overflight shows the wide range of crater shapes that we have encountered on Ceres. The viewer can observe the sheer walls of the crater Occator, and also Dantu and Yalode, where the craters are a lot flatter,"Ralf Jaumann, a Dawn mission scientist from theGerman Aerospace Center, said in a blog postforNASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Ceres'scraters are named after"earthly agricultural spirits, deities and festivals," NASA says.The video uses enhanced colours "tohighlight subtle differences in the appearance of surface materials."

Dawn first arrived at Ceres in March 2015, marking thefirst mission to a dwarf planet.

Since then, ithascaptured stunning close-up images of Ceresand collected data on its mysterious bright spots, now believed to be deposits ofmagnesium sulphate.

Discovered in 1801,Ceres measuring 965kilometresacross is named after the Roman goddess of agriculture and harvest. It was initially called a planet before it was demoted to an asteroid and later classified as a dwarf planet.

Like planets, dwarf planets are spherical, but unlike planets,they share theirorbits around the sun withother similar-sized bodies.

Dawn, which launched in 2007, isin its final and lowest mapping orbit around Ceres,about385kilometres from the surface.

Before arriving at Ceres,the spacecraft spent 14 monthsorbitingthe asteroidVesta in the asteroid belt.