This strange figure of the sun creating a figure-eight shape in the sky is an awesome sight, but required a year of patience by a dedicated photographer to create.

Veteran astrophotographer Giuseppe Petricca took the image from Sulmona, Abruzzo, Italy using a Nikon Coolpix P90 Bridge. The dots forming a curved figure-eight pattern in the sky mark where the sun appeared every day at the same time. A composite causes the pattern called a solar analemma.

Astrophotographer Giuseppe Petricca took the image from Sulmona, Abruzzo, Italy. The dots forming a curved figure-8 in the sky mark where the sun appeared every day at the same time in a pattern called an analemma.
© Giuseppe PetriccaAstrophotographer Giuseppe Petricca took the image from Sulmona, Abruzzo, Italy. The dots forming a curved figure-8 in the sky mark where the sun appeared every day at the same time in a pattern called an analemma.
"If we take a picture day by day, always at the same hour, the sun is not in a fixed position, but it slowly climbs up and then down the curve," Petricca wrote in an email. [See more amazing sun photos from space]