The setting sun is about to perfectly align with New York City’s east-west street grid tonight, transforming the concrete canyons of Manhattan into a glowing solar corridor. The astronomical event known as Manhattanhenge officially returns on Thursday, May 28, offering residents and tourists a rare, unobstructed view of the sun melting into the horizon directly down the center of the city’s cross streets.
Forecasters anticipate a highly favorable evening for spectators, with mostly clear skies and temperatures resting comfortably in the 60s. The spectacle draws thousands of photographers and onlookers to the city’s major thoroughfares, frequently halting crosswalk traffic as the sun approaches the New Jersey skyline.
The first alignment scheduled for Thursday at 8:14 p.m. ET is what astronomers call a “Half Sun,” where the top half of the solar disk sits exactly on the horizon line. A “Full Sun” alignment, where the entire solar disk is visible hovering just above the grid, will take place on Friday, May 29 at 8:13 p.m. ET. Spectators are encouraged to position themselves as far east as possible on broad cross streets like 14th, 23rd, 34th, 42nd, and 57th Streets, keeping a clear line of sight toward the Hudson River. Alternative viewing locations include the Tudor City Overpass and Hunter’s Point South Park in Queens.
Jackie Faherty, a senior scientist and astrophysicist at the American Museum of Natural History, beautifully captured the appeal of the event. “The sun kisses the grid of one of the greatest cities, if not the greatest city in the world, and touches the whole corridor of the concrete jungle with these amazing golden hues. It’s a beautiful thing,” Faherty said.
For those who miss the May viewings, the geometry repeats later in the summer. A Full Sun alignment returns on Saturday, July 11 at 8:20 p.m. ET, followed by a Half Sun on Sunday, July 12 at 8:21 p.m. ET. The roughly seven-minute discrepancy in the sunset times between May and July occurs because the exact time of “solar noon” shifts gradually throughout the Earth’s orbit.
How Grid Geometry Created a Modern Stonehenge
The magic behind the alignment comes down to early urban planning. The famous Commissioners’ Plan of 1811 laid out Manhattan’s street grid with a 29-degree clockwise rotation from true east-west. Because of this specific angle, the sun does not align with the streets on the actual summer solstice. Instead, the geometry perfectly matches the setting sun roughly three weeks before and three weeks after the solstice.
The phenomenon was popularized and officially named by astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson in a 1997 issue of Natural History magazine. Tyson recognized the similarities between the city’s grid and the ancient stone circles of Stonehenge in England, which famously align with the sunrise on the summer solstice.
Tyson also pointed out a humorous cultural coincidence built into the timing. Because the two sets of Manhattanhenge alignments correspond closely with the Memorial Day holiday in May and the Major League Baseball All-Star break in July, he joked that future anthropologists discovering the ruins of New York might mistakenly conclude that early Americans designed the city specifically to worship war and baseball.