As Manhattanhenge Illuminates City, New Yorkers Chase Sunset

On Tuesday night, thousands of people flocked to the city that never sleeps to try and get the perfect shot of the elusive ‘Manhattanhenge’ natural phenomenon.

The biennial event takes place in New York, where the Sun perfectly aligns with the Manhattan street grid.

According to the American Museum of Natural History, Manhattanhenge occurs twice in May and twice in July, and as the Sun sets on the grid, half the disc rests above and half below the horizon.

The henge phenomenon is not limited to New York; comparable occurrences have been reported in other cities with a high concentration of skyscrapers and long straight roadways, such as Chicago, Montreal, and Toronto.

There’s also a dawn variant that occurs in the winter, around three weeks before and three weeks after the summer solstice.

In 1997, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson coined the name ‘Manhattanhenge’. On each of the solstices, the sun aligns with concentric circles of vertical stones at Stonehenge.

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