It was in fact the SOHO spacecraft that was offpointing - as part of a plan to improve the EIT images.
Most instruments have a varying sensitivity in different locations on their detector.
This is, however, not an easy thing to do once you put an instrument in space, so care is taken to construct the flatfield before launch. As time went by, however, EIT's detector response to light was degraded, and more so in those regions that were exposed to more light than others. Since the Sun is not a uniform source of light, it meant that the response dropped off more in some regions than in others. In other words, the flatfield changed on board, and the changes were not known with enough precision to cancel them out. The manoeuvre performed on 8 February, however, changed this.