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Manhattanhenge, Jul 2012 – 03
Image by Ed Yourdon
This is less dangerous than you might think: the traffic lights behind me were red,and the car on the left side of the photo was stopped. Meanwhile, several cars that were traveling north on Amsterdam Ave (immediately behind me) had decided to turn left (i.e., west, towards the sun) on 96th Street; that’s what’s creating the "ghost" images in this 5-image HDR composition.
Fortunately, the left-turning cars gave me a fairly wide berth. And meanwhile, the pedestrian walk/don’t-walk signs on both sides of the street (out of the frame of this photo, on the left and right) now have a count-down clock, so I could see when the traffic lights were within a few seconds of changing.
At that point, I picked up my tripod and scampered over to a safe side of the street, and waited until the lights changed again…
Note: this photo was published in a May 4, 2015 blog titled "Choose A Side."
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Thousands of years from now, when aliens descend upon the Earth, looking for signs of intelligent life amongst the debris of beer cans and Starbucks coffee cups, what will they find? If they happen to land first at Stonehenge, by some curious coincidence, they might well get the impression that we humans like to line up big stones and tall buildings in such a way that they align with the sun during the summer and winter solstice.
Then the aliens would come to New York City. Of course they would: it’s the Center of the Universe, right? Where else would they go — Easter Island? What on earth is there to do on Easter Island, after you’ve seen the big statues? No Times Square, no Yankee Stadium, no Statue of Liberty, no Central Park; just a bunch of funny-looking birds and the big statues…
Anyway, once they got to New York City, our friendly aliens would find a curious alignment of buildings (I’m assuming, of course, that the buildings are all still standing, even though the humans have disappeared), in which the setting sun aligns with the east-west streets in the borough of Manhattan — and which can be seen in late May and mid-July. In the spirit of henge-y things, they would adopt the name first proposed by Neil deGrasse Tyson in 2002 (who, as everyone now realizes, is actually an alien who was sent to Earth back to scout things out before the rest of his tribe made the journey, notwithstanding his day job as an astrophysicist at the American Museum of Natural History): they would call it Manhattanhenge.
And the aliens would wonder if New Yorkers really comprehended what they were building when they began following the Commissioner’s Plan of 1811 in March of that year, which laid out a grid that was offset by 29.0 degrees from true east-west (if it had been aligned with true north, then the henge event would take place exactly on the spring and fall equinox). Indeed, the whole thing was largely ignored until Mr. Tyson called attention to it in 2002; after that, it was the focus of an episode of CSI:NY that aired on November 25, 2009, and it was part of the closing scene in an utterly forgettable 2010 film called Morning Glory.
With their curiosity thus piqued, the aliens would venture further afield, and would discover that the "henge" phenomenon can be seen elsewhere, too. In Chicago, for example, where the setting sun lines up with the grid on September 25th. And in Toronto, where the setting sun lines up with east-west streets on October 25 and February 6th. And in Montreal, which experiences a similar event around July 12th. God only knows how many other cities have henges that they don’t even know about – the mind boggles.
Indeed, there is even an MIThenge. Of course there is! It takes place in mid-November and late January, when the sun shines all the way through 825 feet of MIT’s Infinite Corridor, stretching from the main entrance on Massachusetts Avenue through Buildings 7, 3, 10, 4, and 8. Honesty compels me to admit that we didn’t celebrate the event when I was a student there — but after all, that was slightly before the invention of electricity, and we were all scared of the dark.
You can imagine that the aliens would look at all these henges, and then shake their heads in disbelief. If humans were smart enough to do all that, they would ask themselves, why weren’t they smart enough to stop killing each other and destroying the planet? Why indeed? Maybe it’s because all the good vibes caused by the sunset henge phenomena are offset by bad vibes associated with the corresponding mornings that cause the rays of sunrise to shine in the opposite direction, east to west, along the same lines. In Manhattan, this occurs approximately December 5th and January 8th — days when crazed taxi drivers have been known to run down doddering old seniors as they wobble across the street, days when feral rats have been known to attack innocent tourists as they stand huddled in empty subway stations, days when savvy New Yorkers call in sick, stay home, and get roaring drunk. (For what it’s worth, MIT has no winter henge event, because the eastern end of the Infinite Corridor is blocked by Building 18. But you probably knew that already.)
Sometimes I think that I must be one of those aliens, sent from my home planet to observe the behavior of these strange Earthlings on henge-day. For what it’s worth, I can report that they behaved reasonably well during the mid-July 2012 Manhattanhenge celebration. There was some advance notice in the local newspapers, so photographers and astronomy buffs were prepared; but for the most part, the rest of the city’s population ignored it completely. Unlike last year’s Manhattanhenge, which I photographed from an overpass in front of Grand Central Station on 42nd Street (click here to see the photos of that event), I decided this year to stick closer to home — and photograph the view from 96th Street, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. The first several photos in this set were shot from middle of 96th Street and Amsterdam Avenue; and the final bunch were photographed on the following evening from Broadway and 96th Street…
Since all of the photos shown here were HDR composites (the first several photos are 5-image HDR composites, and the final several are 9-image HDR composites), I had my camera mounted on a tripod, and I used a cable shutter-release to take the pictures without shaking the camera. So I certainly wasn’t "invisible" in the manner that I try to be for most of the street photography that I do; nevertheless, almost everyone else walking across the street ignored me. A few pedestrians gave me a slightly quizzical look as they walked by; a few smiled, and a few said something like "Nice sunset."
In response to such comments, I occasionally said, "Yeah, it’s a very nice sunset — it’s Manhattanhenge!" Again, most people ignored me completely, or gave me a brief quizzical look. But a couple people were curious, and wanted to know more. And one or two people actually said they knew all about it. I even got into a debate with one old codger about his strong belief that Manhattanhenge had actually taken place in June. In June! Sheesh!!
Anyway, that’s it for Manhattanhenge in 2012. If you happen to be in Manhattan for this special event in late-May or mid-June of 2012, and if you happen to see a friendly-looking alien with a camera, it will probably be me…
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