Sun Ligns for ‘Manhattanhenge’ in New York » Design You Trust

Sun Ligns for ‘Manhattanhenge’ in New York

One need not go all the way to Sal­is­bury Plain to wit­ness a spec­tac­u­lar solar phenomenon.

New York­ers have been priv­i­leged to view some­thing called “Man­hat­tan­henge” or “Man­hat­tan Sol­stice” – whereby the sun sets in align­ment with the east-​​west streets of the urban island, pro­vid­ing a visual some­what sim­i­lar to Stone­henge in Eng­land. Man­hat­tan­henge occurs only twice a year – typ­i­cally around May 28 and July 12 or July 13.

In this per­fect and rare jux­ta­po­si­tion, the sun appears to be com­fort­ably nes­tled between Manhattan’s huge sky­scrap­ers. How­ever, the effect lasts for only 15 or 20 min­utes. The term “Man­hat­tan­henge” was cre­ated by astro­physi­cist Neil de Grasse Tyson in 1996 at the Amer­i­can Museum of Nat­ural His­tory, who noticed how sim­i­lar it was to the way the sun sets in Stonehenge.

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