New Thinking Allowed with Jeffrey Mishlove May 29, 2026 This video is a special release from the original Thinking Allowed series that ran on public television from 1986 until 2002. It was recorded in about 1990. It will remain public for only one week. Belleruth Naperstek is author of Your Sixth Sense: Unlocking the Power of Your Intuition, Staying Well with Guided Imagery, and other books. Now you can watch all of the programs from the original Thinking Allowed Video Collection, hosted by Jeffrey Mishlove. Subscribe to the new Streaming Channel (https://thinkingallowed.vhx.tv/) and watch more than 350 programs now, with more, previously unreleased titles added weekly. Free month of the classic Thinking Allowed streaming channel for New Thinking Allowed subscribers only. Use code THINKFREELY.
Activating Your Intuition with Belleruth Naperstek
Spiritual Awakening in the High Middle Ages with Betty J. Kovács
New Thinking Allowed with Jeffrey Mishlove May 30, 2026 Betty J. Kovács, PhD, taught symbolic/mythic language for twenty-five years. She has served as Chair of the Board of Directors of the Jung Society of Claremont, California, and sits on the Academic Advisory Board of Forever Family Foundation. Dr. Kovacs is author of Merchants of Light: The Consciousness That Is Changing the World, winner of The Scientific and Medical Network 2019 Book Prize and a Nautilus Silver Award. She has also written The Miracle of Death: There Is Nothing But Life. Her website is www.kamlak.com. Here she points out that the High Middle Ages, starting around 1000 AD, represented an awakening from the Dark Ages when Europe was dominated by the repressive policies of the Church. Stories of the Holy Grail inspired Europeans with a new sense of reverence for the feminine and a quest for the spiritual. Building the great cathedrals, full of esoteric symbolism, became the major economic activity of the era. New Thinking Allowed host, Jeffrey Mishlove, PhD, is author of The Roots of Consciousness, Psi Development Systems, and The PK Man. Between 1986 and 2002 he hosted and co-produced the original Thinking Allowed public television series. He is the recipient of the only doctoral diploma in “parapsychology” ever awarded by an accredited university (University of California, Berkeley, 1980). (Recorded on May 11, 2020)
“Dies Irae” Verdi Requiem
Sunjung Kim Apr 24, 2019 제주 4.3. 70주년 추념 음악회 “섬의 아픔을 뭍이 기억하다” 소프라노: 오미선 메조소프라노: 김선정 테너: 신동원 바리톤: 양준모 국립합창단, 안양시립합창단 / 참 필하모닉 프로젝트 오케스트라 지휘: 구자범 2018년 4월3일 / 성남 아트센터 콘서트 홀 주최 : 참음악친구들 (참 필하모닉 프로젝트 오케스트라는, 4.3사건 70주년 추념 음악회를 위해 만들어졌다. ‘참음악친구들’이 베르디 레퀴엠 연주를 제안하였고, 이에 전국 각지에서 현직 및 전직 음악인, 음악 전공생과 비전공생, 한국인과 외국인 등을 막론하고, 아픈 역사를 잊지 않으려는 많은 뜻있는 사람들이 자원하여 오케스트라가 구성되었다.) Soprano: Misun Oh / Mezzo soprano: Sunjung Kim Tenor: Dongwon Shin /Baritone: Junmo Yang Korean National Choir / Anyang City Choir Cham Philharmonic Project Orchestra Conductor : Jahbom Koo 2018. Apr. 3 / Seongnam Art Center Concert Hall Live The 70th anniversary of the tragic ‘Jeju April 3 Incident’ Cham Philharmonic Project Orchestra was launched just for this memorial concert. It was made up of professional and amateur musicians and students from all parts of Korea. All members participated voluntarily to perform Verdi’s Requiem for the occasion.
Jeff Burningham and Marianne Williamson: “The Last Book Written by a Human”
Marianne Williamson May 29, 2026 Author and entrepreneur Jeff Burningham joined Marianne for a Substack Live where they discussed his book THE LAST BOOK WRITTEN BY A HUMAN: Becoming Wise in the Age of AI. JeffBurningham.com JeffBurningham.Substack.com Subscribe to Marianne’s Substack: MarianneWilliamson.Susbtack.com
The Homoeroticism of Catholicism | Rice Professor Jeff Kripal
Johnathan Bi May 30, 2026 An interview with Jeff Kripal on mysticism, sexuality, and the homoerotic structure of orthodox religion. Subscribe to my newsletter if you want content updates, invitations to events, and to support my work: https://www.johnathanbi.com/ Transcript: https://www.johnathanbi.com/p/transcr… Companion interviews: He Studied Every Religion, This One Came Closest to Truth: • He Studied Every Religion, This One Came C… The Secret Religion of Nietzsche | On Mysticism: • The Secret Religion of Nietzsche | On Myst… Timestamps: 00:00 0. Introduction 11:38 1. Why Mysticism Selects for Same-Sex Desire 21:06 2. A Queer Reading of Jesus 32:47 3. Why a Sexless Jesus Won Out 41:27 4. Jeff’s Encounter with a Hindu Diety 53:30 5. Mysticism as Hedonism 1:04:07 6. Plato on Love, Sex, and Divinity 1:07:40 7. Sex Runs Through the Supernatural
France’s parliament votes to repeal slavery-era Black Code, with tears and history in the chamber
By THOMAS ADAMSON May 28, 2026 (APNews.com)
PARIS (AP) — For nearly two centuries after France abolished slavery, the colonial-era law that classified humans as property has remained quietly on the books. On Thursday, the lower house of parliament voted to wipe it from French law.
The National Assembly voted 254-0 — a rare show of unanimity — to adopt a bill repealing Code Noir, or Black Code, the 1685 decree King Louis XIV signed to govern slaves across France’s colonies.
The law turned human beings into chattel, allowing them to be worked, beaten, sold, raped and murdered.
And the realization that France never formally did away with it left many aghast. Debate in the chamber turned raw on Thursday.
Steevy Gustave — a lawmaker descended from enslaved people on the Caribbean island of Martinique, now a French overseas department — told colleagues that the repeal was necessary, “but no vote alone can repair centuries of shattered lives.”
“We are not descendants of slaves,” he said, bursting into tears. “We are descendants of human beings born free, then reduced to the worst — reduced to slavery.”
The code’s reach was total. Article 44 declared the enslaved “movable property” — assets a master could acquire like real estate. Those who fled faced branding, the amputation of their ears, and even death. The word of an enslaved person counted for nothing.
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Code Noir’s 60 articles “should never have survived the abolition of slavery” in the 19th century, President Emmanuel Macron said last week.
“The silence, even the indifference, that we have maintained for nearly two centuries toward this Black Code is no longer an oversight,” Macron said. “It has become a form of offense.”
Like French presidents before him, Macron stopped short of an apology.
France ran the third-largest slave trade, shipping about 1.4 million Africans to plantations whose sugar wealth built the French cities of Nantes and Bordeaux. The French empire later spanned four continents.
Others see the repeal as something more telling — a symptom, they argue, of a country that has yet to reckon fully with that past, one of many slow steps along the way.
Calls for France to face its past
In law, officially eliminating it is the easy part, observers say. Code Noir lost all authority in 1848, when France abolished slavery.
France didn’t relinquish its slave colonies: the four oldest — Guadeloupe, Martinique, French Guiana and Réunion — were made full French overseas departments in 1946. That means they’re governed from Paris like any other.
Their roughly 1.9 million people, most descended from the enslaved, are French citizens.
Despite being fully part of France, the overseas departments remain among its poorest territories. Unemployment runs roughly double the mainland rate, and more than three-quarters of households in the Indian Ocean territory of Mayotte live below the national poverty line.
Shocked to find the law wasn’t annulled
Before he discovered the truth, the French lawmaker who put forward the proposal to repeal the law didn’t know it still existed.
Max Mathiasin, from Guadeloupe, had bought copies of the text over the years and left them on his shelf.
“As the great-great-grandson of people who were enslaved, I had never been able to read it in full,” he said. “This was made by human beings — against human beings.”
For him, the vote is “a way of restoring our ancestors, restoring our humanity” before a France whose motto is liberty, equality, fraternity. “It means living up to the Republican promise.”
That promise, he says, is still unkept at home.
“In Guadeloupe,” Mathiasin said, “in the most important positions, in the structures of the state, they are white.”
A colonial exception that never ended
The Foundation for the Memory of Slavery is chaired by a former prime minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault, and its deputy director is Pierre-Yves Bocquet — both white men.
Bocquet calls Code Noir the birthplace of France’s “colonial exception” — the principle that the French Republic’s founding rights could be suspended for those under its rule.
The principle outlived the empire, he said: “Even today, we accept that people in the overseas territories can have fewer rights than in mainland France.”
France is hardly the only country still holding fragments of empire — the United Kingdom, the United States and the Netherlands still have overseas territories.
But what sets France apart, observers say, is that it made its slave colonies equal departments of the Republic, not dependencies it governs from afar.
The state insists that the overseas departments are France like anywhere else, even as the people who live there say they are treated as less.
Most major colonial powers, including Britain, Spain and Portugal, had laws governing slavery in their colonies. In each case, those laws fell away when slavery itself was abolished, leaving no single text to repeal.
France’s Code Noir was different, experts say: a single, named royal law that no one ever formally erased, even after France abolished slavery.
France is ‘still in a form of apartheid’
For Max Relouzat, 81, president of the Association for the Memory of Slaveries, the repeal matters, because so little else has.
His African ancestor had no name under the law, only a number and a registration code — the family that lived in Martinique was given the name Relouzat at emancipation, likely after Nelouzat, a village in the Auvergne region of central France.
What galls him, he said, is what the symbolism leaves untouched: systemic racism in France.
“Under the cover of departmentalization, a colonial system was maintained,” Relouzat said. “If the overseas departments are part of France, why is there a ministry for the overseas?”
In France, he said, “we are still today in a form of apartheid … a form of colonial continuity.”
‘Racism is the legacy of slavery itself’
For some who have fought longest, Thursday isn’t the milestone it appears.
For Florence Alexis, a slavery expert and daughter of the Haitian writer Jacques Stephen Alexis, the real turning point came 25 years ago. In 2001, the Taubira law made France the first country to call the slave trade, and slavery, crimes against humanity.
“That is what changed my life,” Alexis said.
For her, racism is the legacy of slavery itself, not of one edict.
“When I was a child at school, they called me the little monkey,” she said. “People made animal cries when I walked past — as they still do in football stadiums today.”
Paris-born Élodie Léon, 29, whose family is from French Guiana, welcomes the repeal, but resents the delay.
“Symbolic neglect is also neglect,” she said.
“It shocks me,” said Muriel Jean-Baptiste, a Paris-born nurse whose parents are from Martinique. “A law that treated Black people as property was left sitting there.”
The history of reparations
At the Taubira law’s 25th anniversary on May 21, Macron floated the idea of reparations — something that France has long stayed away from addressing.
He called it “a question we must not refuse,” but one on which “we must not make false promises.”
He committed no money, instead defining repair first as truth-telling, education and historical work.
The wealthiest of France’s plantations were in Saint-Domingue, in the Caribbean, where the enslaved rose up and won independence in 1804 as Haiti. France then forced the freed to pay reparations for the loss of their masters — a debt cleared only in 1947.
France isn’t alone. In the United States, federal reparations legislation has stalled for decades. California approved an apology, but no cash.
But the timing of Macron’s latest speech was awkward. Two months earlier, France abstained when the U.N. General Assembly voted 123-3, with 52 abstentions, to call the trans-Atlantic slave trade the gravest crime against humanity.
And this month at the Africa Forward Summit in Kenya, days after declaring himself a “pan-Africanist,” Macron seized a microphone and ordered the room to quiet down.
“As soon as he sets foot on the African continent,” French opposition lawmaker Danièle Obono said, “he can’t help but behave like a colonizer.”
The repeal of the nCode Noir, said Bocquet, “will have no direct effect.” Whether it helps France fight racism and inequality in its overseas territories, he said, “remains to be seen.”
“It is easy for the French authorities, and for Macron, to do this,” Alexis added. “Because it commits them to nothing.”
Adamson is a foreign reporter based in Paris for The Associated Press. He covers European politics, culture and style. He has reported across the continent in an over two-decade career.
ChatGPT on the work of René Girard
ChatGPT:
I think you mean René Girard (1923–2015), the French historian, literary critic, and social theorist.
The central idea: We imitate each other
Girard’s most famous claim is that human desire is mimetic—we learn what to want by seeing what other people want.
For example, you may think you want a particular job, partner, status symbol, or lifestyle because it appeals to you directly. Girard argues that often you want it because someone else values it. We unconsciously copy not only behavior but desire itself.
This creates a triangle:
- Subject (the person desiring)
- Model or mediator (the person being imitated)
- Object (the thing desired)
The object is often less important than the model.
Mimetic rivalry
When two people imitate each other’s desires, they become rivals.
Girard believed that many conflicts begin this way:
- Siblings competing for parental attention
- Neighbors competing for status
- Nations competing for prestige
- Political factions mirroring each other’s hostility
Ironically, rivals often become more alike as their conflict intensifies.
The scapegoat mechanism
Girard’s second major idea is that communities under stress often resolve internal conflict by blaming a single person or group.
As tensions rise, everyone unites against a scapegoat:
- A stranger
- A minority
- A heretic
- A suspected witch
- An outsider
The community experiences relief because violence that had been spreading internally is redirected toward one victim.
Girard argued that many myths and social institutions originated from this process.
Religion and myth
Girard believed that ancient myths often conceal the innocence of the victim. The crowd’s violence appears justified.
He argued that the Judeo-Christian scriptures are unusual because they increasingly reveal the victim’s perspective.
For Girard:
- The story of Abel highlights an innocent victim.
- The story of Joseph exposes unjust persecution.
- The crucifixion of Jesus Christ fully reveals the innocence of the scapegoat and the violence of the crowd.
This was one of his most controversial claims.
His major books
- Deceit, Desire and the Novel — introduces mimetic desire through literature.
- Violence and the Sacred — develops the scapegoat theory.
- The Scapegoat — analyzes victimization in culture and religion.
- Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World — his most comprehensive statement of the theory.
Influence
Girard’s ideas have influenced:
- Literary criticism
- Anthropology
- Theology
- Psychology
- Political theory
His admirers see him as offering a grand explanation of human conflict. His critics argue that he tries to explain too much with a single theory and sometimes stretches the evidence.
A one-sentence summary of Girard’s work would be:
Human beings learn what to desire by imitating one another; this imitation creates rivalry, rivalry produces social crisis, and societies often restore order by uniting against a scapegoat.
ChatGPT on Teresa of Ávila’s sex life
ChatGPT:
There is no reliable historical evidence that Teresa of Ávila had a sexual life in the ordinary sense of the term. She was a Carmelite nun who took vows of chastity and spent most of her adult life in religious communities.
The question often arises because her writings describe intense mystical experiences that can sound erotic to modern readers. In her autobiography, she recounts a vision in which an angel pierced her heart with a fiery spear, producing both great pain and spiritual ecstasy. This experience inspired the famous sculpture The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa by Gian Lorenzo Bernini.
Some modern scholars, psychologists, and literary critics have interpreted these descriptions through the lens of sexuality, suggesting that mystical ecstasy and bodily sensation may overlap in human experience. Others argue that imposing modern sexual categories on a 16th-century mystic can be misleading, because Teresa herself consistently described the experience as a union with God rather than a physical or sexual event.
What can be said with confidence is:
- There is no documented evidence of sexual relationships or sexual activity in her life.
- Her writings contain vivid descriptions of spiritual ecstasy that use imagery of love, longing, and union.
- Those descriptions have generated centuries of debate about the relationship between mysticism, the body, and sexuality.
If you’re interested, I can also explain how Teresa’s mystical experiences have been interpreted by figures such as Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, and modern historians of religion.
Full Moon in Sagittarius – This Is It
(Astrobutterfly.com)
On May 30th, 2026 (or May 31st, depending on where you live), we have a Full Moon at 9° Sagittarius.
The Full Moon is opposite Uranus in Gemini, trine Saturn and Neptune in Aries, and sextile Pluto in Aquarius.
This Full Moon connects all the outer planets into a rare, coherent configuration that will come to expose, in the way only a Full Moon in Sagittarius does – the truth of the matter.
What is truth?
This is the question that philosophers – and philosophers are ruled by Sagittarius – have wrestled with since the beginning of time.
Seeking answers is the very essence of the fire, mutable nature of Sagittarius. We read the books. We travel the world. We explore different perspectives – all in the hope that somewhere, hidden beneath the complexity of life, there is a principle that makes sense of it all.
At its core, Sagittarius is about trying to find a sense of coherence – the “big picture”, a governing principle that ties it all together.
And this process cannot be rushed.
There’s a reason why Sagittarius is the nomad of the zodiac. The man on a horse – always riding, always looking, always searching – never quite settling.
The constant movement can look like aimless wandering. That’s why it’s tempting to reduce Sagittarius to someone who ‘likes adventure’, ‘cannot commit’. But this misses the sacredness of the process of search, which is the pursuit of truth.
The search is not an escape from commitment – it is a commitment to finding the truth.
The reason the rider cannot stop is that they haven’t found (yet) the truth. So they have to keep going – not from restlessness, but from integrity.
And when the truth is eventually found, then and only then is the rider ready to graduate to the Capricorn, committed, make-things-happen state of consciousness.
Rush the Sagittarius process, and we settle for half answers, or linger into restlessness and a feeling that “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for”. Or simply convince ourselves that the search is exhausting and the road leads to nowhere anyway.
The Full Moon in Sagittarius will challenge that part of our psyche that hasn’t yet graduated in Sagittarius.
Full Moon In Sagittarius – This Is It
At its deepest level, Sagittarius is the realization that there is a deeper coherence to our life, and that we are living the life we are supposed to be living.
It is the moment when we can finally say: “This is it“.
“This is it” is the answer to the Sagittarius search. It’s the moment when the rider gets off the horse because the answer has finally been found, and the search has come to its inevitable end.
“This is it” is not an intellectual exercise. We don’t find it by testing hypotheses, making lists of things we like, ‘being intentional’, asking the experts, or weighing the pros and cons.
It is a deeper knowing that only emerges when everything falls into place, into what feels like an effortless choreography.
Our relationship with this Sagittarius principle reveals whether we live our life with integrity – in alignment with our own personal truth – or not.
In that sense, the Full Moon in Sagittarius can be the “yes or no” answer to the “This is it?” question.
It can be the striking realization that “none of this is really me” and maybe our entire life is built on a version of the truth that no longer applies.
The Full Moon in Sagittarius can also bring the assurance that – at least in some areas of our life – we are doing exactly what we are supposed to be doing. That our search for meaning, the striving, the searching have been worth the effort, and that things are finally clicking into place.
At the Full Moon in Sagittarius, the rider pauses:
Is this it?
Manhattanhenge 2026 begins tonight: Here’s when and where to see the sunset spectacle
By Joe Rao last updated 2 days ago (Space.com)
Twice a year, the setting sun perfectly aligns with Manhattan’s street grid, creating one of New York City’s most spectacular skywatching events.
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Twice each year, New Yorkers gather along Manhattan’s cross streets to watch the setting sun perfectly align with the city’s grid, creating one of the most striking urban skywatching events in the world: Manhattanhenge.
In 2026, Manhattanhenge will occur on May 28-29 and on July 11-12. The best views are typically along 14th, 23rd, 34th, 42nd and 57th Streets looking west toward New Jersey.
On May 28 and July 12, viewers will see a “half sun” resting on the horizon, while May 29 and July 11 feature the dramatic “full sun” effect.
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But why does Manhattanhenge happen in the first place?
The answer lies in the unique layout of Manhattan’s streets and the changing position of the setting sun throughout the year.
Let’s face it. If you live in New York City, where light pollution is among the worst in the United States, there aren’t too many celestial sights that you can look forward to seeing. And yet, twice each year, people not only from in and around New York, but from across the country and even perhaps from around the world come to Manhattan to be mesmerized by an uncommon phenomenon that occurs near sunset.
Around Memorial Day and again for a day or two around July 12, New Yorkers become intrigued by an unusual circumstance that allows the setting sun to be seen on many of Manhattan’s east-west cross streets simultaneously, provided you have a clear view down to the New Jersey horizon. Indeed, it is not unusual on those special evenings to see people clustered on the corners of favored cross streets watching the setting sun as it aligns with Manhattan’s canyons of brick, glass and steel, creating dramatic vistas. In recent years, the Manhattanhenge term has become very popular in pop culture, even being used for the title of a 2009 episode of the television series “CSI: NY,” as well as official clips for the TV Land series “Younger” (Season 3).
Enigma of Stonehenge
Of course, there are other places on Earth where the sun aligns with certain landmarks at specific times of the year. The most famous is Stonehenge, the Neolithic monument at Wiltshire in the Salisbury Plain of England, where on the day of the summer solstice, as seen from inside Stonehenge, the sun appears to rise directly above the so-called Heel Stone. It’s an event that attracts thousands each year.
Although we are certain that the massive upright stones that comprise Stonehenge took about 1,500 years to construct and that it probably once served as a burial ground, many mysteries about it still abound. More than half a century ago, British astronomer Gerald S. Hawkins (1928-2003) and co-author John B. White published a book, “Stonehenge Decoded” (Doubleday, 1965), which claimed that Stonehenge was used to predict a wide number of astronomical occurrences. While attracting a large following, the book also attracted some reputable scientific scholars who scoffed at its findings. All these years later, the issue remains a contentious one and the true nature of Stonehenge may forever be a mystery.
The Gridiron of Manhattan
So far as Manhattanhenge is concerned, its origins are not nearly as mysterious. It is based on a design for Manhattan outlined in “The Commissioners’ Plan of 1811” — for a rectilinear grid, or “gridiron” of straight streets and avenues which intersect each other at right angles. This design extends from north of Houston Street in lower Manhattan to just south of 155th Street in upper Manhattan. Most cross streets in between were arranged in a regular right-angled grid that was tilted 30 degrees east of true north to roughly replicate the angle of Manhattan Island.
And it is because of this 30-degree tilt in the grid that the magic moment of the setting sun aligning with Manhattan’s cross streets does not coincide with the June solstice, but rather with specific dates in late May and early July.
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While we say that the sun sets in the west, most times that’s not exactly the case! Like the popular axiom, “A broken clock is correct twice a day,” the sun sets precisely due west only twice each year — on the equinox days in March and September. But between the first day of spring and the first day of autumn, the position on the horizon where the sun appears to set (known as the azimuth) occurs somewhat north of due west. The azimuth of the sunset slowly shifts northward until the day of the June solstice; thereafter, it reverses course and shifts back to the south. On June 21, the sun sets at an azimuth of 302 degrees or 32 degrees north of due west.
But for the setting sun to be seen from all of Manhattan’s cross streets, its azimuth must be 300 degrees or 30 degrees north of due west. That happens twice — first as the sun is climbing toward the solstice in late May — and then for a second time after the solstice, as the sun migrates back toward the south in early July.
And that first opportunity in late May is rapidly approaching.
Dates and times to look
| Date 2026 | Sun | Time (EDT) |
|---|---|---|
| May 28 | Half sun | 8:14 p.m. |
| May 29 | Full sun | 8:13 p.m. |
| July 11 | Full sun | 8:20 p.m. |
| July 12 | Half sun | 8:21 p.m. |
The man who first brought attention to the Manhattanhenge phenomenon nearly 30 years ago is the noted astrophysicist and director of New York’s Hayden Planetarium, Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson. He has written an interesting blog about the event.
For those who will be in New York City and hoping to get a view of, and maybe even photograph this year’s spectacle, here is a tip: While any cross street will suffice, Dr. Tyson suggests the wider, “two-way” cross streets that ensures the best views of the west-northwest horizon (toward New Jersey) at 14th, 23rd, 34th, 42nd and 57th Streets. “The Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building render (respectively) 34th street and 42nd streets especially striking vistas,” he notes.
Popular viewing locations can become crowded, especially on 34th and 42nd Streets, so arriving at least 30 minutes before sunset is recommended.
We should also note here that the times provided below are not for the exact moment of sunset. Sunset is defined as when the very top of the sun disappears below a “true” astronomical horizon (such as what one might see from a ship out at sea). For the Manhattanhenge effect, allowances must be taken for hills and any landmarks along the distant New Jersey landscape, so the sun’s altitude is assumed to be one degree (or slightly less) above the actual horizon.
In 2026, there are not two, but four possible dates.
For your first opportunity in May, the dates to circle on your calendar are May 28 and May 29. On the first date, at 8:14 p.m. EDT, you will see a “half sun,” that is, half above and half below the landscape. On the following night, at 8:13 p.m. EDT, you will see a “full sun,” with the entire solar disk resting above the horizon.
If you miss out in May, you’ll get a second chance in July, on the 11th and 12th. On the first July date a “full sun” appears at 8:20 p.m. EDT, while on the second date, we get the “half sun” effect at 8:21 p.m. EDT.
Manhattanhenge in the morning?
Some of you might be wondering if Manhattanhenge is visible at sunrise. The answer is yes, but you’ll have to wait until late in the year or at the very start of next year to see it. Once again, there are four opportunities, this time flanking the date of the winter solstice on Dec. 22. We now must look 180 degrees in the opposite direction, toward an azimuth of 120 degrees or 30 degrees south of due east. The first chance comes on Dec. 9 as the sun continues to shift to the south, with a “full sun” at 7:13 a.m. EST, followed by a “half sun” on Dec.10 at 7:12 a.m. EST.
After the solstice, the sun reverses course and begins to shift back to the north. On Jan. 1, we’ll see a “half sun” at 7:26 a.m. EST, followed the next morning by a “full sun” at 7:28 a.m. EST.
Keep in mind, however, that unlike with sunset, there are more likely to be local obstructions to your visibility of the rising sun. Those living in Upper Manhattan and Harlem must contend with buildings and structures rising up from The Bronx; those on the Upper East Side and Midtown will be looking toward Queens, while those in the East Village, down to Houston Street, are facing Brooklyn edifices.
Of course, in attempting to see or photograph Manhattanhenge in the morning, one must also consider that the ambient late fall/early winter morning air temperature is likely to be anywhere from 30 to 60 degrees F. colder compared to late spring/early summer evenings, and there could even be some snow underfoot (especially in January). And lastly, the weather odds for a clear and sunny winter morning are considerably less favorable compared to having a clear and sunny summer evening.
But whenever you attempt to see it, be it summer or winter, evening or morning, we wish you good luck and clear skies!
Joe Rao serves as an instructor and guest lecturer at New York’s Hayden Planetarium. He writes about astronomy for Natural History magazine, Sky and Telescope, The Old Farmer’s Almanac and other publications.