Manhattanhenge is back for a return engagement July 13 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
SUNSET ON THE MANHATTAN GRID
East side of Manhattan
Wednesday, July 13, 8:00 – 8:25 pm
Admission: free
www.haydenplanetarium.org
manhattanhenge may 30 slideshow
On May 30, New Yorkers got a gorgeous example of Manhattanhenge, and it’s back for a return engagement on July 13. Between approximately 8:00 and 8:30, the sun will align with Manhattan’s off-center (by thirty degrees) grid to send spectacular bursts of sunlight streaming across the streets. Coined by master astrophysicist and Hayden Planetarium director Neil deGrasse Tyson in 2002, Manhattanhenge takes place twice a year; for 2011, those dates are May 30 and July 13, when the sun will create “a radiant glow of light across Manhattan’s brick and steel canyons, simultaneously illuminating both the north and south sides of every cross street of the borough’s grid,” Tyson explains on the planetarium website. “A rare and beautiful sight. These two days happen to correspond with Memorial Day and Baseball’s All Star break. Future anthropologists might conclude that, via the Sun, the people who called themselves Americans worshiped War and Baseball.” Photographers will once again line up along the city’s wider thoroughfares on the east side, including Twenty-third, Thirty-fourth, Forty-second, and Fifty-seventh Sts., risking their physical safety against oncoming traffic as the try to capture that exact moment when the sun is half above the horizon, half below it. Wrongly called the Manhattan Solstice, the event “may just be a unique urban phenomenon in the world, if not the universe,” Tyson explains. We experienced the May 30 edition, and it was well worth rearranging our schedule for. You should do it to with this second chance.