Last month, the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, run jointly by the European Space Agency and NASA, enjoyed a spectacular view, as the comet C/2002 V1 (NEAT) approached the Sun at a distance of around 15 million kilometres — roughly one-tenth of the distance from the Sun to the Earth. The comet is seen here over a 69-hour period.

Hourly images were fed back by the large-angle and spectrometric coronagraph, an instrument studying the Sun's corona, or gas halo. To detect the corona, the coronagraph blots out the disk of the Sun (the star's position is indicated by white circles).

As the comet orbits the Sun, its bright ion tail is deflected by the magnetic field of the solar wind. The striking feature in the centre picture is a huge eruption of gas from the corona.