How Streethenge came to be
I first heard about Manhattanhenge from a podcast, maybe in 2023, and I could not tell you which one. What stayed with me was that the idea seemed better than the photograph. A city street and the setting sun keep an appointment for a few minutes, and then it is over.
Later I started noticing the same thing closer to home. I must have seen it plenty of times before without thinking of it as anything, and then one day it turned into a phenomenon. Walking my dogs, I would look up and find the sun sitting at the end of the road. Driving, I would run straight into 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 feel when it is getting close.
Streethenge began as a way to know that day before it arrives.
These moments, sometimes called a street henge after Manhattanhenge, are everywhere, on side streets and avenues and the ordinary roads people walk down without looking up. Streethenge works out when sunrise, sunset, moonrise, or moonset will line up with a street near you, so you can save the date, go and stand there, and see what actually happens.
It 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 and the buildings and the trees and the parked cars and the slight wrongness of every map. Sometimes nothing much happens. Then you wait and 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