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A probe hurtling towards Pluto has captured the dwarf planet locked in a mesmerising dance with its largest moon, Charon.

The New Horizons spacecraft took the footage as it raced through space to rendezvous with the dwarf planet in 2015.

The 12 images that make up the animation were taken from a distance ranging from 267 million to 262 million miles (429 million to 422 million km).

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A probe hurtling towards Pluto has captured the dwarf planet locked in a dance with its largest moon

Put together, the footage covers Pluto and almost one full rotation of its largest moon, Charon, which orbits 11,200 miles (about 18,000km) above the dwarf planet's surface.

Charon is almost half the size of Pluto. The moon is so big that Pluto and Charon are sometimes referred to as a double dwarf planet system.

The mission team are now using the footage - which focuses on Pluto's position against a backdrop of stars – to fine-tune the distance that New Horizons will fly past Pluto and its moons.

Pluto's four smaller satellites are too faint to be seen in these distant images, but will begin to appear in images taken next year as the spacecraft speeds closer to its target.

The mission team are now using the footage - which focuses on Pluto's position against a backdrop of stars – to fine-tune the distance that New Horizons will fly past Pluto and its moons

There remain many unanswered questions about Pluto. The New Horizons probe (artist's impression pictured) hopes to provide some answers when it flies by the dwarf planet on July 15, 2015

The artist's concept shows the Pluto system from the surface of one of the smaller moons. Pluto is the large dwarf planet at centre, right. Charon, the system's largest moon, is the smaller body to the right of Pluto

'The image sequence showing Charon revolving around Pluto set a record for close range imaging of Pluto - they were taken from 10 times closer to the planet than the Earth is,' says New Horizons mission Principal Investigator Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute.

'But we'll smash that record again and again, starting in January, as approach operations begin.

'We are really excited to see our target and its biggest satellite in motion from our own perch,' he adds, 'less than a year from the historic encounter ahead.'

New Horizons is near the end of its final pre-Pluto annual systems checkout and instrument calibration before Pluto arrival.

The New Horizons mission operations team at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, will put the spacecraft back into hibernation on August 29 - just four days after New Horizons crosses the orbit of Neptune on August 25.

That final 'rest' lasts only until December 6, when New Horizons will stay wake for two years of Pluto encounter preparations, flyby operations, and data downlinks.

There remain many unanswered questions about Pluto. The New Horizons probe hopes to provide some answers when it flies by the dwarf planet on July 15, 2015.

Pictured here is a scale comparison of Earth and its moon (left and top right) and Pluto and Charon (bottom right). Charon, the dwarf planet's largest moon, is almost half the size of Pluto