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Here Are Your 2013 Manhattanhenge Dates (Starting Tonight!)
By
Jen Carlson
Published May 28, 2013
Modified May 28, 2013
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By
Jen Carlson
Published May 28, 2013
Modified May 28, 2013
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Prepare for your Instagram feed to be filled with sun porn—tonight is the first Manhattanhenge of the year, and it looks as though it may be ruined by rain and an overcast sky. But there are three more coming up soon—astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson has posted this year's schedule, which goes like this:
Half Sun on the Grid
May 28 8:16 P.M. EDT
July 13 8:24 P.M. EDT
Full Sun on the Grid
May 29 8:15 P.M. EDT
July 12 8:23 P.M. EDT
For the uninitiated, deGrasse Tyson (the director of the Hayden Planetarium in the Department of Astrophysics at the American Museum of Natural History) founded the event, which happens four times a year when the setting sun aligns precisely with the Manhattan street grid, "illuminating both the north and south sides of every cross street of the borough's grid."
deGrasse has pointed out that future civilizations may think our grid has "astronomical significance, just as we have found for the pre-historic circle of large vertical rocks known as Stonehenge. For Stonehenge, the special day is the summer solstice, when the Sun rises in perfect alignment with several of the stones, signaling the change of season." Though he adds that our days happen to correspond with Memorial Day and Baseball's All Star break, so "future anthropologists might conclude that, via the Sun, the people who called themselves Americans worshiped War and Baseball."
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manhattanhenge
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Jen Carlson
Jen Carlson is a former WNYC and Gothamist editor.
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