Reminder: Manhattanhenge Riseth at Sunset!

Reminder: today the sun sets EXACTLY in the middle of all the east-west Manhattan streets. That's at 8:17pm. Let's hope for clear weather so this twice-annual event can be recorded accurately on Flickr! [Related: more info at the Daily News and this 2002 Science article from the American Museum of Natural History's Neil deGrasse Tyson.]

Sunsets by andersenKT and Alodie on Flickr.

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By Jake Dobkin in News on May 28, 2006 9:15 AM

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JO Mamm

this shit was wack. The sunset at like 8:3o something and it looked just like yesterday. Nothing special. The way the Times and Gothamist hyped it up got my dick hard but I was left unsatisfied.

Brooklyn Book Worm

What fascinates me about this story is the way it illustrates how clearly the Times drives local and national news coverage. The pheonomenon in question has clearly been with us since 1811, when the grid plan was adopted. Since the 1920's -- a peak period for skysraper construction -- if not before, its effects have been clearly visible. Neil deGrasse Tyson published his paper about it nearly four years ago. But a query in the "City" section's FYI column, published two weeks ago, suddenly propelled it to the top of the agenda. Newsweek and New York magazine mentioned it. All the braodcast TV stations have mentioned it in newscasts, as have CNN and NY1. ABC and NPR (among other media) ran national features.

To be sure, this is a slow news week. But it's surely not a coincidence that so many editors discovered it at the same time after 195 years. Even more telling: the "City" section is distributed only in the five boroughs.