North is at the top of the scene, which corresponds with the orientation of the Sun as seen at midday in the northern hemisphere of Earth. At the time of the observations, SOHO is looking towards the heart of the Milky Way Galaxy. The Milky Way, made by the light of billions of distant stars, forms a luminous band slanting down and to the right.
Dark lanes seen in the Milky Way are real features familiar to astronomers.
They are created by dust clouds in the disk of the galaxy that obscure the distant stars. A doomed comet, previously unknown, enters on the left of the image on December 22. Its path curves towards the Sun and on December 23 it disappears behind the occulting mask of the coronagraph. It fails to reappear on the far side of the Sun. Whether or not its trajectory took it directly towards the visible surface, the comet must have evaporated in Sun's atmosphere.