Update: This article was published in 2022 and now includes 2023’s dates and times.

It’s time for New Yorkers to get very excited about the setting sun.

That’s because Manhattanhenge is upon us. It can produce, when the weather cooperates, four of the most striking sunsets of the year in New York City.

The name is a New Yorker-style nod to Stonehenge, the ancient rock structure in the English countryside that aligns with the sunsets and sunrises during the summer and winter solstices. That pre-modern monument was purposely built for religious and spiritual reasons. In contrast, the grid of New York City was not designed with sunsets in mind, but it has ended up functioning in a similar manner. Across four days every May and July, it can bring people together to admire our particular geographic location in the cosmos as the sun settles into the horizon, disappearing perfectly along the city’s broad west-east corridors.

An event like Manhattanhenge can halt the entire borough, beckoning people to celebrate an otherwise normal daily sunset.

As if New York couldn’t become any more magical, the sunsets of Manhattanhenge illuminate the streets with a glow of deep tangerine and bubble gum pink, transforming the bustling streets into a place to pause and say, “wow.”