Located in the South Pacific Ocean, about 6,000 people live on the most isolated and inhabited island in the world: Rapa Nui. Known to many as Easter Island, a name coined by Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen after landing on the island on Easter Sunday 1722, Rapa Nui is roughly twice the size of Disney World, or 63.2 square miles. Every year, about 100,000 people visit the remote island to see the famous 13-foot-tall moai statues, or Easter Island heads.
As expected, visiting this remote island is not easy. To combat overtourism to the small island, only a limited number of flights fly to Rapa Nui each week. This means that flights can book quickly, especially during the busy season between December and March. But now, thanks to the work of an intrepid team of geographers and researchers, you can view these magnificent Moai statues from the comfort of your own home.
The team, which included faculty from Binghamton University and the State University of New York, has just launched the project The first high-resolution 3D model of Rano Rarakuone of the main quarries on Rapa Nui. The model includes approximately 1,000 carefully rendered moai figurines. It also allows viewers to explore the Rano Raraku Quarry, which is located in a steep volcanic crater that cannot be explored by visitors to the island due to safety concerns.
“You can see things that you can’t actually see on Earth. You can see the tops and sides and all kinds of areas [you] “I will never be able to walk to it,” Carl LeBow, a team member and an anthropologist at Binghamton University, said in a statement. Lebo is also the lead author of a new paper on the model and the statues published in One plus In November 2025.
In addition to providing researchers with a detailed 3D replica of the Rano Raraku quarry, Lebo also hopes the model will help more people experience the island.
“We’re documenting something that needed to be documented, but in a comprehensive and shareable way.” So get busy exploring Rano Raraku! As Lebo said, “The quarry is like an archaeological Disneyland.” But now you can visit it from the comfort of your home.
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