Manhattanhenge and Chicagohenge: Dates, Times and Where to Stand

Manhattanhenge is the few evenings a year when the setting Sun lines up with Manhattan’s cross streets, so it glows at the end of 42nd Street like a lamp at the end of a hall: once in late May and once in mid-July. In 2026 the American Museum of Natural History named May 28 and 29, and July 11 and 12. This page gives the evenings and the minute for any year to 2035, for sunset and sunrise, and does the same for Chicagohenge in March and September.

How to use it

Pick the city and the year. The answer gives the two kinds of evening the museum names: the full sun, when the whole Sun sits just above the skyline in the street’s line, and the half sun, when only its top half shows. Below it, each henge has a table of the evenings either side, with the minute the Sun stands in line, how high its centre is, and a small drawing of how much of it you will see. The Sun lines up every one of those evenings; what changes is how much of it is left above the buildings. In Chicago, pick your street too: the city’s streets do not all point the same way, and the page uses the one you will stand on. Switch to sunrise for the morning version. The link keeps your city, year and street.

Where the numbers come from

Manhattan’s grid is not quite east–west. As Neil deGrasse Tyson puts it in the museum’s video, “the borough of Manhattan is actually rotated east of north by about 30 degrees”. The museum’s astronomer Jackie Faherty gives the exact line it computes for: “299.1 degrees is our chosen azimuth, and half a degree or a quarter of degree in terms of its altitude”, and “I always do the calculation for 42nd Street at Fifth Avenue”. So the page takes that corner and that line. For each evening it finds the moment the Sun’s direction is 299.1° from true north, with the same solar maths as Where Is the Sun Right Now?, and then reads how high the Sun stands at that moment. The skyline is taken as 0.5° up. The Sun is about half a degree wide, so from that height the page knows how much of it shows. The evening its centre sits nearest the skyline is the half sun. On the side where the Sun stands higher, the evening its bottom edge sits nearest the skyline is the full sun: the next evening or the one after.

We checked the page against all 28 evenings the museum published from 2020 to 2026. The minute matches within one minute on 26 of them and within two minutes on all 28. The museum’s choice of which evening is “half” and which is “full” can differ from the page’s by a day. Its July dates came a day or two earlier than the page’s in six of those seven years. So for a year the museum has published, the page shows the museum’s own evenings and times, and marks them “AMNH”. For later years it shows its own, and the table gives the evenings either side.

For 2027, which the museum has not published yet, the page puts the half and full sun on May 29 and 30, and July 12 and 14, all between about 8:12 and 8:21 PM. The museum usually publishes its dates in the spring.

Chicagohenge

Chicago’s grid was laid out by the Public Land Survey, and Adler Planetarium says its streets “line up almost perfectly with the cardinal east and west directions on a compass”. Adler gives Chicagohenge as the days around each equinox: in 2026, March 20–23 and September 19–22. We measured how almost. Fitted to the City of Chicago’s own street centre lines from State Street to 4800 West, Madison Street points 269.0° looking west, and the other straight east–west streets are within about a third of a degree of it. That is one degree south of due west, and one degree moves the henge by a few days. For Madison Street the setting Sun stands on the horizon in the street’s line on March 17 and 18, and September 24 and 25 in 2026, a few days before Adler’s March dates and after its September ones. The sunrise over Lake Michigan lines up on March 21 and 22, and September 21 and 22, inside Adler’s window. Chicago’s horizon is flat, so the page uses the horizon itself, and the Sun moves about half a degree a day there instead of a fifth, which makes each henge shorter.

Where to stand

• Manhattan. The museum names 14th, 23rd, 34th, 42nd and 57th Street: wide cross streets with a clear line to New Jersey. Its advice: “Find a spot as far east as possible that still has views of New Jersey across the Hudson River.” Tudor City Overpass lifts you above the traffic on 42nd Street, and Hunter’s Point South Park in Long Island City, Queens, looks back across the East River down the same line.
• Chicago. Adler’s advice is to “find one of Chicago’s east–west facing streets, pick a spot 5-10 minutes before sunrise or sunset, and enjoy the view.” The table on the page gives each measured street’s line; Madison, Roosevelt, Division and Chicago Avenue are among the straightest.
• Stay out of the traffic. The cross streets stay open to cars while people line up to take the photo. Stand on the sidewalk or a median.

Common mistakes

• Going on only one evening. The Sun lines up every evening for about a week; what changes is how much of it sits above the skyline. If the forecast is cloudy for the full sun, the evenings either side are nearly as good.
• Arriving at the minute. The time is when the Sun is exactly in line, and the show starts before it. Tyson: “You first see a reflection of the sunlight against the buildings on the north side of the street.” Be in place a good while earlier.
• Expecting a sunrise in Manhattan. The morning version happens in winter, but “looking east for a sunrise, Manhattan ascends”, as Tyson says: the land and the buildings to the east hide the rising Sun on most streets. Chicago’s sunrise over the lake is the one to see.
• Using a magnetic compass to find the line. The angles here are from true north. You do not need a compass at all: stand in the middle of the sidewalk and look down the street.

Plan the evening

For the rest of the trip: two days in New York, the free views from the top of NYC buildings and why New York has so many skyscrapers. For the photo: photographing crowded landmarks and shooting in the golden hour. For sunset and golden hour times anywhere, use the Golden Hour Calculator.