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It might look a bit like alien shape ship coming in to land, but it is actually a photo of 2,953 sunrises and sunsets.

The arced trails of the sun as it rises and falls were captured over a period of eight years and one month.

It's thought to be the longest exposure image ever taken and has been discovered at the University of Hertfordshire's Bayfordbury Observatory.

The image was taken by Regina Valkenborgh, who was MA Fine Art student at the University of Hertfordshire in 2012.

She set up the pinhole camera using a tin can lined with photographic paper, put it on top of a telescope in the observatory, and then forgot about it.

A pinhole camera is made up of a box or tube with a translucent screen at one end and a tiny hole (the pinhole) made in the other end.

Light enters the box through the pinhole and is focused by the pinhole onto the translucent screen. The image is upside down and smaller than the object.

Also known as long exposure photograph, ity is a technique used to show the passage of time in a scene, achieved when a camera's shutter is left open for a long period.

The dome of Bayfordbury's oldest telescope is visible to the left of the photograph and the atmospheric gantry, built halfway through the exposure, can be seen from the centre to the right.

Regina Valkenborgh said: "It was a stroke of luck that the picture was left untouched, to be saved by David after all these years.

"I had tried this technique a couple of times at the Observatory before, but the photographs were often ruined by moisture and the photographic paper curled up.

I hadn't intended to capture an exposure for this length of time and to my surprise, it had survived. It could be one of, if not the, longest exposures in existence."