#jon carmichael

The full solar eclipse seen across part of the U.S. last August captivated the nation, becoming one of the most photographed events in recent memory.

Now, it may turn out that one of the most jaw-dropping images of the event was taken from a Southwest Airlines flight flying at 39,000 feet.

That will likely be up for debate Tuesday after up-and-coming photographer Jon Carmichael releases his composite image of the eclipse, the first in the continental U.S. since 1979.

And it had been 99 years since such a large swath of nation had seen such an event, with America’s last Pacific-to-Atlantic total solar eclipse occurring in 1919.

As for Carmichael’s image, which is officially being unveiled today at Twitter’s New York offices, it shows a view that’s hard to believe wasn’t taken from space itself.

It’s being released on the one-year anniversary of the 2017 eclipse.

Carmichael – a New York-based photographer whose work has attracted patrons like Elton John – knew the eclipse would present the chance for spectacular images. And what better place to try to capture that than from an airplane.

His first effort fell through; an elaborate video he entered for an Alaska Airlines contest ultimately was not picked.

"All my eggs were in that basket," Carmichael said.

He then scrambled to find another option. He calculated that a Southwest flight from Portland, Oregon, to St. Louis was the next-best option.

Worried that Southwest’s open-seating policy might thwart his effort, Carmichael planned to arrive at the airport with $600 in cash to try to cajole his fellow passengers into letting him into a prime window seat.

"I was so nervous about not getting a window seat," he said. "When you go this far, you’ve got to be prepared. I was ready to bribe somebody if that’s what it took. Fortunately, I didn’t have to."

Carmichael introduced himself to Southwest employees, and the crew of Southwest Flight 1368 were happy to help.

Carmichael was given seat 1A – a front-row window seat – and one of the flight’s pilots even offered to wipe clean the window so that residue on the outside of the window wouldn’t obscure Carmichael’s shooting.

That wasn’t all the help that Carmichael would get from the cockpit crew.

As the perfect angle proved elusive, the Southwest pilots helped with a series of unscheduled (but FAA-approved) turns over Idaho’s Snake River to help the photographer get into position for several cracks at the eclipse.

Several turns later, Carmichael got his angle – and the rest of the passengers on Flight 1368 got encore glimpses as the Missouri-bound Boeing 737 remained under the moon’s shadow.

The image isn't from one single shot but rather the culmination of more than 1,000 images that Carmichael stitched together.

Carmichael estimates he took around 1,200 shots during the three minutes of "totality."

"It’s by far the most technologically challenging project I’ve ever taken on," Carmichael said of the image.

"The plane is flying at 500 miles per hour, and I had to stitch it together so it looks like it was taken from one point of view."

Southwest confirmed its crews helped Carmichael with his efforts.

“The whole story is really amazing. From the pilots literally learning Jon’s story just before boarding, to them going to the lengths of washing his window before flight to help him capture the best possible shot, just really speaks to what our employees will do to make a memorable experience for our customers,” Southwest spokeswoman Michelle Agnew said to USA TODAY’s Today in the Sky blog.

“No one could have anticipated Jon capturing such an amazing photo. We’re excited to have played a small part in bringing his dream to life, all at 39,000 feet.”

The photo also is winning praise from other corners.

“This is by far one of the best eclipse photos I have ever seen. In Jon’s photograph, one gets the linkage to space, with greater landscape detail than we get from Earth’s orbit. His image is a ladder to space,” Carter Emmart, Director of Astrovisualization of the Rose Center for Earth and Space and the American Museum of Natural History, said in a statement after seeing the image.

The roughly 6-foot-by-9-foot image will be on display in Twitter’s New York offices at least through September 9.

Twitter also will share the image via its eponymous platform.

Its permanent fate has not been decided, Carmichael said to Today in the Sky.

For now, Carmichael says he's hoping that sharing the photo via social media will help remind people of the event one year ago, when the red-state, blue-state divisions of the past few years seemed to take a back seat as Americans took in the eclipse.

"My hope is to reignite that," Carmichael said. "Here’s a way to kind of remind people what that did for us."

Over 200 million Americans watched the total #solar eclipse in August 2017, but no one had a better view than photographer Jon Carmichael. He spent years plotting how he could capture the total eclipse in a unique way, eventually combining his passions for photography, astronomy, and flight. Credit: Jon Carmichael  :: [h/t Starvoyagers]

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Oh dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon, Irrecoverably dark, total Eclipse Without all hope of day!