The STEREO HI2 optical train is a bit unusual because of the unique mission requirements, but this is what its lens flares look like. You have to compare apples to apples, against other HI2 images. That is why I checked other images when Venus was at the same angular separation from the sun, this flare always appears then, but that does not correspond to any particular location in space, just relative to Venus and the sun. ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohQQ21K1ais

Time lapse of images from the webcast: http://h.dropcanvas.com/efrsb/maxmerge2c.gif ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJ4N6dj89pE

Same as the last video, I imported SDO's orbital elements into Celestia and then recorded the sunward view on December 6, 2010. Sure enough the moon was what passed in front of the sun. I re-recorded it while having Celestia track the moon's motion in the sky while following SDO in orbit so that the video would be much smoother and you could see the ecliptic grid markings much more clearly. Those markings show that the observed upward motion of the moon was consistent with what should have been seen due to SDO's orbit around the earth. To see for yourself, just paste the following orbital elements into celestia's solarsys.ssc file below the entry for earth: "SDO:Earth I" "Sol/Earth" { Class "spacecraft" # Mesh Radius 0.005 EllipticalOrbit { Epoch 2455536.02043152 Period 0.99727900 SemiMajorAxis 42164.391 Eccentricity 0.0002434 Inclination 27.9524 AscendingNode 184.3762 ArgOfPericenter 323.7533 MeanAnomaly 11.6594 } Obliquity 27.9524 EquatorAscendingNode 184.3762 RotationOffset 118.5570 # Orientation [ ] } ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sg1VRtT3q-A

Brightness calculations spreadsheets and images: http://dropcanvas.com/frg0m ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Us02olq4bYc