Hundreds of spectacular new images of Mercury are pouring in from the first spacecraft ever to orbit the smallest planet.

NASA’s Messenger spacecraft took its first shot of Mercury early Tuesday morning, and sent 224 more images to Earth by the end of the day. In its first three days of shooting, Messenger will collect 1,500 images, exceeding the number of photos taken by all earlier flybys combined.

“That’s just the barest hint of what we’ll have on a regular basis once the mapping phase begins” on April 4, said principal investigator Sean Solomon in a news conference Wednesday. “This extremely dynamic planet will be on continuous display for the first time.”

This gallery showcases the first detailed peek at the hot, scarred, under-explored world at the solar system’s inner edge.

The first-ever image from orbit released Tuesday was actually one of eight images taken through several different filters. Each filter lets in a different wavelength of light, letting planetary scientists piece together colored versions of the images. In the image above, wavelengths of 1,000 nanometers, 750 nm and 430 nm are displayed in red, green, and blue, respectively.

The first image caught sight of terrain that had never been seen before, plus several bright craters and the south pole.