A very cool phenomenon happens in New York this week: one of only two nights of the year when the rays of the setting sun align perfectly with the grid of New York City streets. That means that you can watch the sun go down without any buildings obstructing your view. It happens at roughly the same time each year — once in late May and once in early-to-mid July (or, if you prefer, around the Memorial Day holiday and baseball’s All-Star break) — but the exact dates vary a bit, just like the solstice. This year, the second date falls on Friday, July 13.
Neil deGrasse Tyson of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History — one of my favorite places in New York — wrote this piece a few years back in which he compared the phenomenon to Stonehenge, and asked if future archaeologists would one day attribute astronomical significance to the layout of Manhattan streets. If they only knew.
Tags: newyork
May 29, 2008 at 11:06 pm
[...] day of the year our city’s downtown grid aligns with the setting sun like New York’s rendition of Stonehenge, aka ”Manhattenhenge“?? Of course, our streets don’t follow a true north/south [...]