After spending more than a month in orbit on the dark side of dwarf planet Ceres, NASA's Dawn spacecraft has captured several views of the sunlit north pole of this intriguing world.

The animated GIF above shows the north pole of the dwarf planet as seen by Dawn on April 10, 2015. Dawn was at a distance of 21,000 miles (33,000 kilometers) when its framing camera took these images. The spacecraft was maneuvering toward its first science orbit, which it will enter on April 23.