PASADENA, Calif., Feb. 5 (UPI) -- NASA is the closest it (or any spacecraft) has ever been to the dwarf planet Ceres, and its latest photos, beamed back to mission headquarters earlier this week, are the best close-ups astronomers have ever captured of the miniature sphere -- part asteroid, part planet.

While still slightly pixelated, the latest of pictures of Ceres are the sharpest ever captured, even beating out those taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. The newest Ceres images feature a resolution of 8.5 miles (14 kilometers) per pixel.


But Dawn is still some 90,000 miles away from the dwarf planet, which charts a wobbly orbital path between Mars and Jupiter. With plans to get much, much closer, images of the mini planet will only get clearer and clearer in the coming weeks. The probe will enter into orbit around Ceres in early March.

The Ceres mission is coordinated from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managed by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.