Press enter or click to view image in full sizeThe Galileo Observatory on top of Sphere overlooking the city of Las Vegas. (Image credit: Alex Delacroix, Lily Kuan and Ezra Kelderman on behalf of the Galileo research team)
In September, 2024, two distinguished visitors showed up at the front door of my home. They were Jim Dolan, executive chairman and CEO of the Madison Square Garden enterprises, accompanied by Jane Rosenthal, CEO and executive chair of Tribeca Enterprises. They made an offer that I couldn’t refuse: build a state-of-the art Galileo Project Observatory on top of Sphere in Las Vegas.
Sphere is an entertainment arena funded at a construction cost of 2.3 billion dollars. The venue seats 17,600 people and has unprecedented immersive video and audio capabilities, including a set of LED displays totaling 16,000 by 16,000 pixels over a full hemisphere (but still short by a factor of 13 from the 3.2 gigapixels imaged by the Rubin Observatory camera in Chile), speakers with beamforming and wave field synthesis technologies and shaking seats. The venue’s exterior features an exosphere with 54,000 square meters of LED displays, making it the largest screen in the world. Sphere measures 112 meters high and 157 meters wide.
Sphere opened to the public on September 29, 2023, a year before Jim and Jane visited my home. The venue was inaugurated with a performance by the Irish rock band U2 and most recently featured a unique screening of an immersive 4D version of the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz.
Press enter or click to view image in full sizeAvi Loeb from an inside view of the exosphere in Las Vegas. (Image credit: Loeb photo collection)
Just as the AI production of The Wizard of Oz started screening at the end of September 2025, the Galileo research team, led by Ezra Kelderman, Alex Delacroix, Lily Kuan and Eric Masson, completed the installation of all-sky camera arrays in the infrared and visible bands on top of Sphere. The arrays were placed at the highest point above the LED displays of the exosphere and appear from above as a freckle on top of the perfect outer skin of Sphere.
Press enter or click to view image in full sizeThe Dalek array of infrared cameras of the Galileo Observatory on top of Sphere, overlooking the city of Las Vegas. Tests indicated that light pollution is not severe during nighttime. (Image credit: Alex Delacroix, Lily Kuan and Ezra Kelderman on behalf of the Galileo research team)
During the installation process, I had the privilege of climbing all the way up to the top of Sphere with Galileo team members for the installation of the Galileo Observatory. The experience was exhilarating. I told my team members: “If you can make it to the top of Sphere, you’ll make it anywhere.”
Press enter or click to view image in full sizeAvi Loeb during a climb to the top of Sphere in Las Vegas noted to the Galileo team members: “If you can make it to the top of Sphere, you’ll make it anywhere.” (Image credit: Loeb photo collection)
In addition to the observatory on top of Sphere, the Galileo team installed two other copies of it located 10 kilometers away — at the two corners of the base of a triangle. Operating the three observatory units simultaneously provides images of objects in the sky from different directions, enabling to measure their distance, velocity and acceleration through the method of triangulation.
Using machine learning algorithms, the data analysis team of the Galileo Project will search for Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAPs) which lie outside the performance envelopes of human made technologies, such as drones, helicopters, airplanes or satellites. We hope to analyze exquisite data on a few million objects per year in search for UAPs over Las Vegas. One thing is clear: “What happens over the sky of Vegas, will not stay in Vegas.”
On October 24, 2025, I publicly announced the Galileo observatory on top of Sphere at the Joe Rogan Experience podcast (soon accessible on YouTube and Spotify).
Press enter or click to view image in full sizeAvi Loeb and Joe Rogan after the recording of the Joe Rogan Experience on October 24, 2025. (Credit: Loeb Photo Collection)
Tomorrow, October 25, 2025, I will be attending the NASCAR car race at the Kevin Harvick Speedway in Bakersfield, California, where the racer Alex Malycke features the Galileo Project, 3I/ATLAS, and my image on his race car. Hopefully, I will have the opportunity to drive this car with a suit and helmet at the practice before the race.
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Alex Malycke’s car being prepared for the NASCAR race, Bakersfield, California on October 25, 2025 (Credit: Alex Malycke)
In academia, I often feel like attending a race in which the participants misbehave. Under these circumstances, I can only hope for a new guest who will improve the situation. Here’s hoping that the Galileo Sphere Observatory on Sphere will spot an extraterrestrial guest of higher intelligence than displayed in terrestrial academia.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Press enter or click to view image in full size(Image Credit: Chris Michel, National Academy of Sciences, 2023)
Avi Loeb is the head of the Galileo Project, founding director of Harvard University’s Black Hole Initiative, director of the Institute for Theory and Computation at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and the former chair of the astronomy department at Harvard University (2011–2020). He is a former member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and a former chair of the Board on Physics and Astronomy of the National Academies. He is the bestselling author of “Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth” and a co-author of the textbook “Life in the Cosmos”, both published in 2021. The paperback edition of his new book, titled “Interstellar”, was published in August 2024.