Manhattanhenge

New York's urban island of Manhattan, with its gridiron street layout, sees summer Suns set neatly between skyscrapers. Jamie Carter explains the phenomenon

- Jamie Carter

On the date of the June solstice each year (20 or 21 June), thousands gather at Stonehenge in Wiltshire, England to watch the Sun rise just to the left of the Heel Stone. It's a view that humans may have been enjoying for 5,000 years, but there are far more recent constructions that align with the solstices too. Perhaps the most famous is in New York City, where the gridiron layout of its streets means that four times each year, people gather to watch the Sun 'kiss the grid', in what's known - in a tribute to England's neolithic monument - as Manhattanhenge or the Manhattan Solstice.

Manhattanhenge describes four days when either the setting Sun or the rising Sun is aligned with the streets that run east to west in Manhattan. During each one of these events, onlookers stand in the middle of any of the numbered east-to-west streets on the grid and witness - by looking east (for a sunrise) or west (for a sunset) - the Sun sitting on the horizon between the borough's famous skyscrapers.