Meta, Utah Valley University partnering to build observatory in Eagle Mountain

EAGLE MOUNTAIN — Tech giant Meta continues to expand its ties in the Beehive State, with its latest move coming through a $450,000 gift to Utah Valley University for the construction of the Walden Park Observatory in Eagle Mountain.

The donation brings Meta's total investment in the observatory, located at Walden Park, 4322 N. Frontier Street, to $700,000. The project has also received funding from UVU, Utah County and Eagle Mountain.

"This is designed as a public observatory. It's not a research facility. It's not located, you know, on the kind of high, dry, dark mountain peak in the remote wilderness somewhere that a research facility would be located," said Joe Jensen, a physics professor at UVU. "This is designed as a facility that would be accessible to people in the community."

The observatory will also be designed as a place where UVU students and faculty members can hold lectures, Jensen added.

Along with its urban location, the Walden Park Observatory will also be unique in its design, straying from the stereotypical dome construction most think of when imagining an observatory.

That type of build, Jensen said, "wasn't really going to fit with the community and with what we wanted," which was "a space where groups, families, community groups (and) school classes could meet and look at the sky, but also look through telescopes."

With that in mind, the observatory will instead be outfitted with a flat top with a roll-off roof that will slide off to allow a clear view of the night sky.

Jensen said the university would like to break ground on the building sometime this winter or early next spring, targeting a completion date around September 2027.

Just last week, Meta announced a significant expansion of its Eagle Mountain data center, with the city fully supporting the plan. The company first came to Utah in 2018 with a data center comprising 2.4 million square feet of space to house data storage and processing equipment for the world's biggest social media platform.

"The data centers have come into Eagle Mountain, and we have had them fit into our community instead of the other way around," Kyle Ireland, a spokesman for Eagle Mountain, said. "Meta has come into our community, and they have become part of our community."

And along with the abundant educational and community opportunities the observatory can provide, Jensen is hoping it will also infect the community with a little dose of wonder.

"I think when people have the opportunity to see things for themselves, whether it's in nature, whether it's animals or the ocean, or in this case, the sky, the stars, and the planets ... it means a lot more than watching a YouTube video or watching a documentary on TV," Jensen said. "It connects you with the heavens — with the cosmos — in a way that's really more profound."

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