An Uninterrupted View of the Sun

SOHO moves around the Sun in step with the Earth, by slowly orbiting around the First Lagrangian Point (L1), where the combined gravity of the Earth and Sun keep SOHO in an orbit locked to the Earth-Sun line. The L1 point is approximately 1.5 million kilometers away from Earth (about four times the distance of the Moon), in the direction of the Sun. There, SOHO enjoys an uninterrupted view of our daylight star. All previous solar observatories have orbited the Earth, from where their observations were periodically interrupted as our planet `eclipsed' the Sun.

SOHO's path towards L1:

• SOHO's web-based orbit simulator (Courtesy of ESA)
• SOHO's halo orbit (GIF)
• SOHO's transfer orbit (GIF)