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Julio Cortez / AP
Photographers aim their cameras as the sun sets through the buildings on 42nd Street in Manhattan during a phenomenon known as Manhattanhenge on July 11, 2012. Manhattanhenge, sometimes known as the Manhattan Solstice, occurs when the setting sun aligns with east-to-west streets of the main street grid.
Tonight's showing of New York's hometown celestial alignment, known as Manhattanhenge, was a spectacular success that more than made up for the washout in May.
Some of Manhattan's best-known east-west streets — 42nd Street, for instance — were filled with the glow of the setting sun at 8:24 p.m. ET. They were also filled with crowds straining to snap pictures.
"When did Manhattanhenge turn into Woodstock?" Brooklyn resident Joe Raskin asked in a Twitter update.
Julio Cortez / AP
People stand in the middle of 42nd Street as the sun nears the horizon on July 11, 2012.
Andy Dallos / The Rachel Maddow Show
Andy Dallos, a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show" on MSNBC, documented Manhattanhenge in a series of shots snapped from West 50th Street. Check out The Maddow Blog for more of Dallos' photos.
Manhattanhenge occurs when Earth's tilt is just right to have the sun right on the horizon, in line with the orientation of the street grid. That happens twice a year, generally in late May and mid-July. This year, the best viewing times were on May 29 and 30, and again on July 11 and 12. May's opportunity wasn't the greatest, due to clouds and rain. This week, however, the skies have been sunnier, and so have the dispositions of the New Yorkers hoping to get a good view.
"A Manhattanhenge sun sets, leaving a luminous glow in its wake," photographer Inga Sarda-Sorensen wrote in an oft-retweeted Twitter update.
The best news for New Yorkers is that the show replays Thursday at 8:25 p.m. ET, when the sun can be seen as a half-disk sitting on the western horizon. (Remember, don't gaze at the sun for any length of time with unshielded eyes.) Here's a quick viewing guide from Life's Little Mysteries.
Did you get a great picture tonight? Share it with us and other msnbc.com users via our FirstPerson upload page.
Update for 3:25 p.m. ET July 12: Thanks, readers, for coming through with some great shots. If you're in Manhattan, you've got another shot at the 'Henge at sunset. To whet your appetite, check out these FirstPerson pictures:
Submitted by Chaitanya Kapadia / UGC
Here's what Chaitanya Kapadia says about this picture: "I had set up on a nice spot right in the middle of 34th Street, between the double yellow lines with a few photographers wanting to get the Empire State Building in my shot. However, I should have anticipated photographers to just swarm the streets when the sun lined up with the grid. Minutes later, the police drove down the middle of the road, getting everyone out, which only meant stepping to the side until they passed you, and then right back. Took this using three exposures hand-held."
Submitted by Anne Torres / UGC
Anne Torres captured Manhattanhenge from Tudor City on July 11. During the setup for the shot, Torres wrote this report: "Spectators begin staking their spots right in the middle of East 42nd Street a little before 8 p.m. Several people behind me who were positioned up on Tudor City can be heard muttering, 'Crazy New Yorkers.'"
Submitted by Paolo Palmero / UGC
FirstPerson contributor Paolo Palmero sent in this perfect aligned shot of the sun setting between Manhattan's skyscrapers on July 11.
Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
Leave a Comment:
Millennia from now, future space aliens will dip up the now buried Manhattan and discover the buildings were build in such a way than the sun..... proving there were once advanced culture on this planet. Haha-ha-ha-hhaaaa.
I've long suspected that the Manhattan skyscrapers were just a big celestial calendar.
Amazing how they captured the sun and both trees in such a display of nature.
tomorrow night has a special attraction as Mitt Romney will drop trou on Wall St and allow the setting sun to bounce off his Ass thus completing the hat trick of the Uber Rich.
@ Flaps down-nose up............Classic!!!.....The visual in my head burns worse than starring straight at the sun. Almost fell over laughing.
I have been going to NYC for a very long time and I never heard of Manhattanhenge! It's impressive, though.
You see ....
There is a bright or sunny side to New York ....
Anything to make us humans look ridiculous.
And then they'll see this comment and be all sorts of confused...
I may be a bit jaded, but this seems completely underwhelming. Most certainly not a 'wow', and it's particularly sad if this does 'wow' someone.
People in NYC must be starving for entertainment.
uh...what??
Spell checker, dude. It's your friend. ;)
The alignment of these streets exactly matches that of a peculiar solar event, clearly an indication of a heavily religiously invested culture. No doubt, this solar event was a festival of intense importance to these primitive humans and was celebrated with a feast of slaughtered bovines. The fact that they retained an immense park in the midst of their many stone temples suggests a focused agricultural effort to feed the apostates of their particular cult.
~WMG, Anthropologist circa 4500 CE
All this would prove to aliens is that we knew where our planet's poles were, how to make lines pointing to both of them, and how to make lines at right angles to those....
Many other cities use a similar grid work (Miami/Dade County, for example), but only NYC has enough tall buildings along those streets to get this canyon-like effect.
The photos do not come close to doing it justice
But the reporter is also making more of it than it is
Hey History Channel... We cannot explain how it was possible for primitive 20th century man to erect such large structures, some exceeding 900' in height. To build this site, man must have been visited by some not-so-ancient aliens with highly advanced surveying tools and some form of "constro-beam" or force-field technology.
So nice to see urban folk flip out over nature! (Of course, the aliens built Manhattan in such a way to cause this lineup (right, Scientologists?)).
Xenu take you and broil you in a volcano of dubious Thetans!
Hasteur... Hasteur... Haste... ;-)
Oh well, doesn't take much to amuse (or awe) some people.
I worked in The City for about five years. It IS a strange experience because you're so used to how the city feels. The concrete canyons of midtown are unlike anywhere else I've ever been. Sure, other cities have skyscrapers, but it's not the same. (Note: I've never been to Miami or Chicago, but I can speak for Boston, DC, Philadelphia, Baltimore, LA, Atlanta, Seattle, Hartford, and a score of other cities.)
Great pic but I will take the open sky over skyscrapers any day. And the stars at night cannot be beat.
So many imbeciles taking pictures w sh!tty cellphones, oof, what a waste!
It's not like imbeciles are in short supply, we can afford to waste a few
Not much different than the usual daily life on Earth.
Lets see...My Choice is between 'imbeciles' who take a photo of a sunset with their cellphone AND you who uses profanity and derision to attack those who are enjoying a rare bit of natures glory.
I will take the imbecile anytime
Because everyone knows intelligent people use profanity to communicate...
I think that anything that gets people out of doors and into the street to share a special event is a good thing. Manhattan is uniquely suited to such a solar alignment with the street grid and it is an event that should be celebrated, not scorned.
I was wondering, though, if any other modern cities also have a street layout that allows the sun to reach through the city once or twice a year as does Manhattanhenge? If so, do the residence of these lucky cities also come out to witness it?
Sailcat, most other modern cities have a street layout that allows you to see the sunset every evening! That's one of the benefits of living somewhere where there are open spaces between the buildings! :)
Depending on your angle of view, you can see the same thing almost anywhere.
Do other cities celebrate the solar alignment with their streets? If so, which ones? The reason I ask is because most cities were not planned so carefully when they were founded and the street grid became twisted and turned as the grid followed the growth of the cities as they matured. I think New York may be more unique than you might think. Still other cities may be just as lucky...
Does that matter?
Even where this picture was taken if you stood off to the left or right a few feet you would see close to nothing.
Stand behind two telephone poles and you can see the same thing.
(only better)
I don't think Viewer Ready gets it.
No, it does not seem that he does.
Sailcat... If a city were truly planed to take advantage of a solar event they would have alined the streets for the summer solstice which takes place in late June. This alinement appears to be more of a happy accident, but has the advantage of taking place twice a year. I had to think about it a bit but the further north you go the more the sun lights the north side of buildings in the morning or evening. In Iceland at the arctic circle the sun never sets on the solstice and a street alignment due north would create the same effect, touch the horizon then start to rise again. Now if the New Yorkers would rip there cloths off and dance naked up 42nd street we might really have a unique event.
wje37fcsm:
I've been to New York. Several times.
Let me assure you... 95% of New Yorkers are NOT people you would ever remotely want to see naked. It would alter you forever, if your eyes didn't melt and run down your face first.
I used the word "unique", I didn't say I'd like to take part in it...
It was not "engineered" I can assure you.
But, hey if it makes em' happy??
wow, we have beautiful sunsets here in KC, MO about every evening, we're sooooo lucky :) love my city!!!!
It's nice to read news that isn't depressing for a change. Thank you, Alan Boyle.
Like Californians, it does not take much to "WOW" people in New York.
They should be happy just to SEE the sun in any shape form or fashion.
No Smog?
Of course this coincides with the Mayan calender and the coming of 12/21/12 when the earth shall be incinerated and replaced by a new planet, supporting a highly evolved species that will rule the sun!
Hey look, what is that big bright thing. I'm not sure all the gay's are in the way. The rest of the world sees sun sets all the time.
You were looking at a rainbow.
***facepalm***
Porroham: Everything is relative, so if you can't find excitement in your own life, you can get the same effect by smugly diminishing the joy of others.
lets use instagram to give it that old look, i mean who needs new high tech cameras when we can make them take pictures like back in the 60's and put them in facebook every freaking year!
Hope you're invested for the long term, 5,500 years from now what will those monuments to capitalism mean?
Well, they'll always have phallic symbolism
I like it ....
This is really interesting which they've made unique to their city of skyscrapers.
Well, not quite the transit of Venus, but a good show!
Every spring and fall I experience Streethenge, when the sun shines directly into my eyes when I'm driving east in the morning and west in the evening. It's a real drag, if you ask me - it's literally blinding, and therefore, very dangerous. You can't get away from it - I work east of where I live, so I get it when I drive into work in the morning and again when I drive home in the afternoon when I get out. In the spring it happens about three weeks after the Spring Equinox (in early April), and in the fall it happens about three weeks before the Fall Equinox, like in early September. This is the problem while driving due east or due west.
Obviously in Manhattan, the streets are oriented in a roughly southeast / northwest direction, so Manhattanhenge happens about three weeks before and after the Summer Solstice.
"My god,............ Its full of light"
"What is that HAL?"
"I think you know the answer too that question already,........... Dave"
"Its the source of your existence"
While I think the "onlookers" and Manhattanites stopping what they were doing just to grab a picture and stand in awe of this was staged - it's a pretty picture. Seriously - if you know anything about people moving on the streets of New York, traffic is NOT going to stop while people joyfully grab a picture of this "celestial event" without lots of horns blaring and voices raising. Does it warrant a place on the "front" cover - that's up to the news venue - let it go. Finding a way to make a political comment - sad, just sad. I'd rather see this than see another discussion on anything to do with who's divorcing who - etc etc etc.....
Wow, those city folk need to get out a little more often....I find it sad that people get excited watching a sunset between buildings!
This Manhattanhenge configuration is almost as good as a NYC bagel with lox and cream cheese placed exactly in the middle, the red lox glowing through the hole of the sesame bagel. I said almost as good. The bagel is better.
what a stupid tradition. what the heck is that? as if it was a natural thing. The people in new york have nothing else to adore. it is really pathetic.
been to NYC a few times. who, IN THEIR RIGHT MIND, would want to live in that sh!t hole of a city??? what a garbage dump!!!!!