Some are calling this photographer's eclipse photo the best of all time — and he took it from his window seat on a commercial flight. 

The photograph, called 108, is a mosaic, a year-long synthesis of 1,200 photos taken at 39,000 feet in the span of three minutes. 

Along with two-third's of America's population, 32-year-old photographer Jon Carmichael mapped out a plan for the Great American Eclipse of 2017. When he found out his video entry in an Alaska Airlines contest for a seat on a flight through the path of totality didn't win, he was devastated. But he quickly hatched another plan.

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Southwest Airlines flight 1368 from Portland to St. Louis would fly through the path of totality. Carmichael booked it. And brought along $600 in cash to ensure he could buy his way into a window seat if needed (it wasn't).

At the gate, in a NASA shirt, camera around his neck, Carmichael revealed his plan to Southwest employees. They loved it. So much so that the captain of the flight personally cleaned the outside of Carmichael's window to ensure he had a clean shot. 

Over Idaho’s Snake River, the plane did five 180 degree turns at full totality, which was all Carmichael could ask for (before the plane took off, according to an Inc. interview, Carmichael was told about the maneuvers, "Don't get your hopes up"). 

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Roughly 1,200 photos and three minutes later, the shoot was over. Carmichael would put in hundreds of hours of work over the next year perfecting his mosaic.

On Aug. 21, 2018, a 10-foot laser-crystal print of 108 was unveiled in Twitter's New York offices. 

"The reason I worked so hard for this," Carmichael said at the unveiling, "is because this was such a uniting moment in our history."