Twice per year, New Yorkers and visitors are treated to a phenomenon known as Manhattanhenge, when the setting sun aligns with the Manhattan street grid and sinks below the horizon framed in a canyon of skyscrapers.

The event is a favorite of photographers and often brings people out onto sidewalks on spring and summer evenings to watch this unique sunset.

Manhattanhenge happens for the first time this year on May 28 at 8:13 p.m. and May 29 at 8:12 p.m., and will occur again on July 12 and 13.

Some background on the phenomenon:

WHERE DOES THE NAME MANHATTANHENGE COME FROM?

Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson coined the term in a 1997 article in the magazine Natural History. Tyson, the director of the Hayden Planetarium at New York's American Museum of Natural History, said he was inspired by a visit to Stonehenge as a teenager.

The future host of TV shows such as PBS' "Nova ScienceNow" was part of an expedition led by Gerald Hawkins, the scientist who first theorized that Stonehenge's mysterious megaliths were an ancient astronomical observatory.

It struck Tyson, a native New Yorker, that the setting sun framed by Manhattan's high-rises could be compared to the sun's rays striking the center of the Stonehenge circle on the solstice.

Scientists have come a step closer to identifying the mysterious origins of the "slow" solar wind, using data collected during the Solar Orbiter spacecraft's first close journey to the sun.

Solar wind, which can travel at hundreds of kilometers per second, has fascinated scientists for years, and new research published in Nature Astronomy, is finally shedding light on how it forms.

Solar wind describes the continuous outflow of charged plasma particles from the sun into space—with wind traveling at over 500km per second known as 'fast' and under 500km per second described as "slow."

When this wind hits the Earth's atmosphere it can result in the stunning aurora we know as the Northern Lights. But when larger quantities of plasma are released, in the form of a coronal mass ejection, it can also be hazardous, causing significant damage to satellites and communications systems.

Despite decades of observations, the sources and mechanisms that release, accelerate and transport solar wind plasma away from the sun and into our solar system are not well understood—particularly the slow solar wind.

How can sunlight reflecting off SpaceX's Starlink satellites interfere with ground-based operations? This is what a study recently posted to the arXiv preprint server hopes to address as a pair of researchers investigate how Starlink satellites appear brighter—which the researchers also refer to as flaring—to observers on Earth when the sun is at certain angles, along with discussing past incidents of how this brightness has influenced aerial operations on Earth.

This study holds the potential to help spacecraft manufacturers design and develop specific methods to prevent increased brightness levels, which would help alleviate confusion for observers on Earth regarding the source of the brightness and the objects in question.

Here, Universe Today discusses this research with Anthony Mallama of the IAU—Center for the Protection of Dark and Quiet Skies from Satellite Constellation Interference regarding the motivation behind the study, significant results, potential follow-up studies, importance of studying Starlink satellite brightness, and implications for managing satellite constellations in the future.