Astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson joins AccuWeather to share how he helped make Manhattanhenge a popular event in New York City as well as offering the best places to view the phenomenon in the city.
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00:00Welcome back to AccuWeather Early and thanks for watching on a Wednesday morning as we continue to look at the cloudy skies in the Northeast it will bring some questions for those in the Big Apple it does because this week New Yorkers will again get to see a cosmic event on the city streets it's called Manhattan Henge and here to explain it is Neil degrasse Tyson astrophysics author and director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American
00:29Museum of Natural History good morning Neil we want to know what exactly is a Manhattan Henge well let me back up for a moment and tell people that when I was a kid when I was 14 I went on an expedition to the British Isles and visited Stonehenge which we're all familiar with we had learned in the 1970s and onward that that was not just a temple it was actually an observatory that was designed to reference special
00:59alignments of the sun moon and stars and that imprinted upon me and when I came back to the city I'm a native New Yorker I said to myself I want one of those
01:09for New York and is there some building that would align and finally I just resorted to the fact that the grid the street grid of
01:19Manhattan is it points to the horizon not on the equinoxes because Manhattan itself is rotated compared with the grid what we say north in Manhattan is really northeast but no one cares about that fact so you can find the days of the year where the sun sets exactly on the grid and that photo there that's of course 34th street with the Chrysler building and
01:47and but when I first published my photos of it no one was in the streets and then when I started making a bigger fuss about it now tens of thousands of people flood the streets blocking traffic for reasons other than con ed or police activity so I'm delighted that the universe can influence influence us that way
02:08I love it I love it I love the inspiration from when you were younger and you brought it back to your city so we talked about already what inspired you to name the annual alignment and spread the word over the last 24 years but what is the best way and locations for those in Manhattan to see this
02:24yeah so most city streets believe it or not cut completely across the borough there's some that get blocked for example 59th street gets blocked completely by uh isn't it's no longer the time warner center whatever you know at 59th and 8th avenue in central park west your vision is blocked so you have to find streets to cut completely across
02:47so that would include 57th street 42nd street 34th street and many other tinier cross streets would satisfy this as well my preference are the streets that have the huge monumental buildings so for example 42nd street has the Chrysler building 34th street has the Empire State Building and that's what gives you the hinging effect
03:17in Manhattan in Manhattan as possible so that you get the convergence of the streets to a vanishing point at the sunset when I've attended these and I see people pulling out their telephoto lenses to try to zoom in on the sunset what are you doing no no that's wrong okay back out and watch the radiance just fill the energy of the street and oh by the way Manhattan Henge a few years ago got lifted into
03:46the Oxford English Dictionary to the Oxford English Dictionary so I'm very proud of that that's awesome you should be proud of that that you should all right so there is a few times a year that this occurs and there's one event in mid-July does that differ in any way
03:58no not at all so what happens is people need to be I think reminded or told for the first time that at our latitude the sun does not set directly down to the horizon it sets at an angle first second the sunset
04:15the sunset point shifts throughout the year as we go to mid-summer and then we come back towards winter and right now the setting point that's on its way north of west on our way towards the summer solstice in June and then it works its way back and so we'll catch it on the way back around June
04:38so around July 11th or 12th and I've joked that the first of these matches closely with Memorial Day and the second of these matches closely with with the baseball's all-star break
04:51so I joke that in apocalyptic earth when they dig up the Manhattan grid you know how anthropologists always do they talk about how the people were sun worshipers and everything was related to the sun
05:02I'm pretty sure they're going to conclude that America was about war and baseball because of this alignment and so of course that's just I'm just kidding myself about that but I think about how anthropologists decode what was going on in an ancient civilization all the time
05:21I'm fascinated by everything that you're saying all right it is rare that a powerful celestial moment can be on the calendar and shared by so many so what is your favorite part of these evenings and what can we learn from them
05:32yeah there was nothing to learn it's just to bask in the majesty of this juxtaposition of the universe a skyline which we create and just our appreciation for that juxtaposition and I'm an urban astrophysicist
05:47and for me this is an ideal combination of the two now it's up to you guys to clear the sky of clouds okay now it's gonna be your fault if we don't see this tomorrow and in July by the way as you know the prevailing clouds generally go west to east and so if we get clouded out it's often because clouds are building over New Jersey so you know
06:14so we blame New Jersey
06:16amazing I can hear your passion in it uh definitely inspiring and just such a cool story Neil deGrasse Tyson
06:26astrophysicist author and director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History
06:32comedian you should add that too you made us laugh a lot here and adding that in thank you so much for joining us here on active early