Manhattanhenge is Back This Week — Here's What It Is And How To Watch

MANHATTAN, NY — Manhattanhenge — an Instagram-worthy phenomenon where the sunset aligns with the east-west streets on Manhattan's grid, creating a striking visual effect — is back this Friday.

The sun will set directly in the middle of the east-west streets in Manhattan, with a half-sun visible July 11, and the full sun will be visible July 12, Jackie Faherty, senior research scientist in the Museum’s Department of Astrophysics and senior education manager in the Museum’s Department of Education, told Patch.

The Museum will be hosting a Manhattanhenge block party on Friday, July 11, to celebrate the solar event, complete with a salsa band.

For both solar events, expect to see lots of people cheering and taking photos, Faherty said.

"It's become a good people watching thing, too — you can watch the sun, you can watch the people freaking out, you can watch the cabs get annoyed that there are people in the middle of the street, and people are talking to each other, which so rarely happens in New York," Faherty said.

The best streets to watch Manhattanhenge are the wider east-west blocks, like 14th, 23rd, 34th, 42nd, and 57th streets, the American Museum of Natural History said.

"Manhattanhenge is astronomy in your face — it's a time where people realize they live on this rock that's spinning around and orbiting this giant ball of gas and dust that we call the sun," Faherty said.
Though the sun has been setting in the same pattern across our sky since the dawn of time, the excitement around Manhattanhenge is relatively recent.

"Manhattanhenge" was first coined more than 25 years ago by the American Museum of Natural History-based astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Faherty said, but it didn't become a viral phenomenon until 2009, with crowds filling Midtown intersections to catch a glimpse and an Instagram photo, she said.

"Starting in 2009 or so, when I was a graduate student at the museum, I thought it would be fun for us to start doing a public program on it at the museum and invite people to watch it together. Word started to spread, people started to want a picture, and the event went viral. People even started planning trips to New York to see it," Faherty said.

Click here for more information on the event.

For questions and tips, email Miranda.Levingston@Patch.com.