(New York) For a few minutes of instagrammable spectacle: Hundreds of New Yorkers and tourists came out Tuesday evening to admire, phones at arm’s length, the stealthy appearance of the setting sun perfectly aligned between the rows of skyscrapers that criss-cross Manhattan Island.
At 8:12 p.m., as expected, the sun, forming an orange ball in the still blue sky of New York, rose in the distance before disappearing, at the end of the east-west axis drawn by the streets of Manhattan, like 42nd which crosses Times Square.
“It’s a wonderful event. And it’s a totally New York moment,” enthuses Jeanette Wolfson, a science teacher on Long Island, the island that stretches east from New York, who came to take pictures to show her friends. students the next day. And remind them that, contrary to the visual impression, “it’s not the sun that sets, it’s the earth that turns and turns from light to dark,” smiles the 47-year-old teacher.
The phenomenon attracts many photographers armed with telephoto lenses, as well as tourists and New Yorkers, who do not hesitate to stop on the roadway, very briefly affecting the ubiquitous traffic of SUVs, yellow taxis and delivery bikes that make up the landscape. city of the Big Apple.
Camera around the neck, Patrick Batchelder, a 59-year-old photographer, assures that what matters are “the people”. “The photo itself is not that important. It’s about being in the middle of the crowd, and enjoying seeing something unique in New York,” the regular explains.
The event occurs four times a year, for two days, approximately three to four weeks before and after the summer and winter solstices. It bears the name “Manhattanhenge”, an allusion to Stonehenge, this great megalithic monument in the south of England, crossed in the center by the sun during the summer and winter solstices.
In New York, according to the checkerboard plan of the island of Manhattan drawn in 1811, the city is cut out like a grid between 14th and 155th streets.
On its website, the New York Museum of Natural History recommends taking advantage of “Manhattanhenge” at 14th, 23rd, 34th, 42nd, or 57th Streets to see the moment when “the city frames the sunset.” , as summarized by its astrophysicist, Neil deGrasse Tyson.
Those who missed it on Tuesday evening can try their luck again on July 12.
