A photograph of the solar eclipse in the Dubai Desert has recently been going viral. The man behind the photograph, Joshua Cripps, was going to a photography conference when he got a tip from a friend about an upcoming solar eclipse, which Cripps just couldn’t miss:

“To be honest, it happened almost by chance,” explained Cripps. “I was already planning a trip on board the Nomad Cruise—a conference at sea for digital nomads—which started in Athens and ended in Dubai in early December 2019.”

Cripps continued: “A friend of mine runs the PhotoPills app that helps photographers plan shots and so he always knows when and where the next eclipses, meteor showers, Milky Way, and all that stuff will be, so he told me, ‘You know, there’s going to be an annular eclipse right near Dubai the day after Christmas.’ It was then I decided to stick around in the United Arab Emirates to photograph the eclipse.”