How Streethenge came to be
Open StreethengeI first heard about Manhattanhenge from a podcast, maybe in 2023. I do not remember which one. I remember thinking the idea was more interesting than the photograph: a city street and the setting sun meeting for a few minutes, as if by appointment.
Later I began noticing the same thing closer to home. I had seen it before, but I had not thought of it as anything. Then it became a phenomenon. Walking my dogs, I would look up and find the sun at the end of the road. Driving, I would sometimes meet it as a blinding glare.
Where I live, it is seasonal. Twice a year, once in spring and once in autumn, I step out of my yard and the street is suddenly pointing into the light. I usually do not know the exact day, but I can tell when it is getting close.
Streethenge began as a way to know the day before it arrives.
These moments, sometimes called a street henge after Manhattanhenge, are scattered everywhere: in side streets, suburbs, villages, avenues, alleys, and roads people walk every day. Streethenge estimates when sunrise, sunset, moonrise, or moonset lines up with a street near you, so you can save the date, go there, and see what actually happens.
Streethenge can give you the day and the direction, but not the moment itself. You still have to go outside and stand there with the weather, the buildings, the trees, the parked cars, and the slight wrongness of the map. Sometimes nothing much happens. Then you can try again six months later.
If you photograph one of these moments, I would like to see it. The project may later include a public gallery of submitted street alignments. Send a photo
For the curious
What Streethenge actually calculates
Streethenge takes a location and a street direction, then scans the next year for sunrise, sunset, moonrise, and moonset moments that line up with that street axis in either direction.
For each day it compares the Sun's or Moon's azimuth with the street bearing. It uses a practical visible low-disk moment instead of the formal astronomical rise or set alone, because that usually matches the street-end view better.
What it simplifies
The street is treated as a compass direction taken from map geometry. Streethenge does not model street slope, observer height, elevation above sea level, local terrain horizon, buildings, trees, or the exact spot where you stand.
Curved, circular, or branching streets are reduced to the selected segment. That is why one street name can sometimes appear more than once with different directions.
What that means in practice
The result is a geometric estimate, not a guaranteed photograph. Weather, haze, parked vehicles, map imprecision, and a small change in where you stand can all change what you actually see.
So Streethenge can tell you when to start paying attention and which way to look. The last part still happens outside.
When you need more than this
If you are planning a serious photograph and need augmented-reality previews, focal length and framing tools, weather confidence, shadow modelling, terrain, or obstruction checks, use Streethenge as an early signal and then move to a fuller planning tool.
Tools such as PhotoPills, The Photographer's Ephemeris, Sun Surveyor, Sun Seeker, and Shadowmap are better suited to that final planning step. They solve broader photography, sun-path, moon-path, shade, and visibility questions that Streethenge deliberately leaves out.
Useful planning tools