Ever have a word you created that is so clever and becomes so widely accepted that you expect to receive a phone call from the Oxford English Dictionary folks asking to include your
creative word in their publication? Well, this happened to Neil deGrasse Tyson. There is a phenomenon that occurs twice a year down the New York City grid of streets that run from east to west. Around May 28th and again around July 11th, the sunset is in the precise alignment so that it lights up both sides of the cross-streets as it shines down the grid of Manhattan streets from the Hudson River to New Jersey.
With a nod to the Stonehenge concept of the stones aligning with the cosmos marking the summer solstice, Neil deGrasse Tyson coined the phrase “Manhattanhenge” to name the event where the buildings along the Manhattan grid align with the cosmos. Manhattanhenge, the social event, is usually attended by hundreds of people lining the street grid, many of them trying to capture that perfect photo. For more information on this check out the American Museum of Natural History’s explanation of Manhattanhenge at http://www.amnh.org/our-research/hayden-planetarium/resources/manhattanhenge.
