Features of the motion picture 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 the Earth. SOHO's progress in orbit around the Sun remains in step with the Earth's motion. For comparison, the Sun is less than half the width of your little finger. At the time of the observations, SOHO is looking towards the heart of the Milky Way Galaxy, which lies in the constellation of Sagittarius. 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 which obscure the distant stars. A doomed comet, previously unknown, enters on the left of the image on 22 December. Its path curves towards the Sun and on 23 December 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.