After SOHO had completed its nominal two-year mission in April, 1998 and achieved spectacular results, its mission was extended to 2003 to cover the upcoming period of maximum solar activity expected to peak in 2000. However, due to an unfortunate sequence of operational mistakes, radio contact was interrupted on June 25th, 1998. The spacecraft went into an uncontrolled spin, causing the loss of power. SOHO was lost for a month until the deeply frozen spacecraft was located by radar measurements on July 23rd.
The animation here was made as if looking from the Sun towards SOHO. It was done in an orthographic projection, meaning if a part of the solar array is obscured then it will actually be in the shadow.
The red, green and blue arrows sticking out of the central body represent the +X, +Y and +Z axes respectively. The Sun vector is represented by a yellow arrow. Since we are looking from the Sun towards SOHO it shows up as a yellow dot in the center of the image.
