• What is space?

space description essay

In space, no one can hear you scream. This is because there is no air in space – it is a vacuum. Sound waves cannot travel through a vacuum.

'Outer space' begins about 100 km above the Earth, where the shell of air around our planet disappears. With no air to scatter sunlight and produce a blue sky, space appears as a black blanket dotted with stars.

Space is usually regarded as being completely empty. But this is not true. The vast gaps between the stars and planets are filled with huge amounts of thinly spread gas and dust. Even the emptiest parts of space contain at least a few hundred atoms or molecules per cubic metre.

Space is also filled with many forms of radiation that are dangerous to astronauts. Much of this infrared and ultraviolet radiation comes from the Sun. High energy X-rays, gamma rays and cosmic rays – particles travelling close to the speed of light – arrive from distant star systems.

Story of the Universe

  • Extreme life
  • In the beginning
  • The Big Bang
  • The birth of galaxies
  • The Universe
  • Black Holes
  • The mystery of the dark Universe
  • Cosmic distances

space description essay

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Essay on Space Exploration

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  • Updated on  
  • Jun 11, 2022

Essay on Space Exploration

For scientists, space is first and foremost a magnificent “playground” — an inexhaustible source of knowledge and learning that is assisting in the solution of some of the most fundamental existential issues concerning Earth’s origins and our place in the Universe. Curiosity has contributed significantly to the evolution of the human species. Curiosity along with the desire for a brighter future has driven humans to explore and develop from the discovery of fire by ancient ancestors to present space explorations.  Here is all the information you need and the best tips to write an essay on space exploration.

What is Space Exploration?  

Space Exploration is the use of astronomy and space technology to explore outer space. While astronomers use telescopes to explore space, both uncrewed robotic space missions and human spaceflight are used to explore it physically. One of the primary sources for space science is space exploration, which is similar to astronomy in its classical form. We can use space exploration to validate or disprove scientific theories that have been created on Earth. Insights into gravity, the magnetosphere, the atmosphere, fluid dynamics, and the geological evolution of other planets have all come from studying the solar system.

Advantages of Space Exploration 

It is vital to understand and point out the advantages of space exploration while writing an essay on the topic.

New inventions have helped the worldwide society. NASA’s additional research was beneficial to society in a variety of ways. Transportation, medical, computer management, agriculture technology, and consumer products all profit from the discoveries. GPS technology, breast cancer treatment, lightweight breathing systems, Teflon fibreglass, and other areas benefited from the space programme.

It is impossible to dispute that space exploration creates a large number of employment opportunities around the world. A better way to approach space exploration is to spend less and make it more cost-effective. In the current job market, space research initiatives provide far too much to science, technology, and communication. As a result, a large number of jobs are created.

Understanding

NASA’s time-travelling space exploration programmes and satellite missions aid in the discovery of previously unknown facts about our universe. Scientists have gained a greater understanding of Earth’s nature and atmosphere, as well as those of other space entities. These are the research initiatives that alert us to impending natural disasters and other related forecasts. It also paves the way for our all-powerful universe to be saved from time to time.

Disadvantages of Space Exploration

Highlighting disadvantages will give another depth to your essay on space exploration. Here are some important points to keep in mind.

Pollution is one of the most concerning issues in space travel. Many satellites are launched into space each year, but not all of them return. The remnants of such incidents degrade over time, becoming debris that floats in the air. Old satellites, various types of equipment, launch pads, and rocket fragments all contribute to pollution. Space debris pollutes the atmosphere in a variety of ways. Not only is space exploration harmful to the environment, but it is also harmful to space.

A government space exploration programme is expensive. Many people believe that space mission initiatives are economical. It should be mentioned that NASA just celebrated its 30th anniversary with $196.5 billion spent.

Space exploration isn’t a walk in the park. Many historical occurrences demonstrate the dangers that come with sad situations. The Challenger space shuttle accident on January 28, 1986, must be remembered. The spacecraft exploded in under 73 seconds, resulting in a tremendous loss of life and property.

Conclusion 

There are two sides to every coin. To survive on Earth, one must confront and overcome obstacles. Space exploration is an essential activity that cannot be overlooked, but it can be enhanced by technological advancements.

Space Exploration Courses

Well, if your dream is to explore space and you want to make a career in it, then maybe space exploration courses are the right choice for you to turn your dreams into reality.

Various universities offering space exploration courses are :

  • Arizona State University, USA
  • Bachelor of Science in Earth and Space Exploration
  • Earth and Space Exploration (Astrobiology and Biogeosciences)
  • Earth and Space Exploration (Astrophysics)
  • University of Leicester, UK
  • Space Exploration Systems MSc
  • York University
  • Bachelor of Engineering (BEng) in Space Engineering

Tips to write an IELTS Essay  on Space Exploration

  • The essay’s word count should be at least 250 words. There is no maximum word count. If you write less than 250 words, you risk submitting an incomplete essay. The goal should be to write a minimum of 250-words essay.
  • There will be more than one question on the essay topic. The questions must be answered in their entirety. For example, for the topic ‘crime is unavoidable,’ you might see questions like 1. Speak in favour of and against this topic, 2. Give your opinion, and 3. Suggest some measures to avoid crime. This topic now has three parts, and all of them must be answered; only then will the essay be complete.
  • Maintain a smooth writing flow. You can’t get off track and create an essay that has nothing to do with the issue. The essay must be completely consistent with the question. The essay’s thoughts should be tied to the question directly. Make use of instances, experiences, and concepts that you can relate to.
  • Use a restricted number of linking phrases and words to organise your writing. Adverbial phrases should be used instead of standard linking words.
  • The essay should be broken up into little paragraphs of at least two sentences each. Your essay should be divided into three sections: introduction, body, and conclusion. ( cheapest pharmacy to fill prescriptions without insurance )
  • Don’t overuse complicated and long words in your essay. Make appropriate use of collocations and idioms. You must be able to use words and circumstances effectively.
  • The essay must be written correctly in terms of grammar. In terms of spelling, grammar, and tenses, there should be no mistakes. Avoid using long, difficult sentences to avoid grammatical problems. Make your sentences succinct and to-the-point.
  • Agree/disagree, discuss two points of view, pros and disadvantages, causes and solutions, causes and effects, and problem-solution are all examples of essay questions to practise.
  • Make a strong beginning. The opening should provide the reader a good indication of what to expect from the rest of the article. Making a good first impression and piquing your attention starts with a good introduction.
  • If required, cite facts, figures, and data. It’s best to stay away from factual material if you’re not sure about the statistics or stats. If you’re unsure about something, don’t write it down.
  • The essay’s body should be descriptive, with all of the points, facts, and information listed in great detail.
  • The conclusion is the most noticeable part. Your IELTS band is influenced by how you end your essay.
  • Make sure there are no spelling errors. If you’re not sure how to spell something, don’t use it. It is preferable to utilize simple, everyday terms.
  • Do not include any personal or casual remarks. It is strictly forbidden.
  • Once you’ve finished drafting your essay, proofread it. It enables you to scan for minor and large grammar and spelling problems.

This was the Essay on Space Exploration. We hope it was helpful to you. Experts at Leverage Edu will help you out in writing your essays for IELTS, SOPs and more!

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An Introduction to Space Exploration

While the observation of objects in space, known as astronomy, predates reliable recorded history, it was the development of large and relatively efficient rockets during the early 20th century that allowed physical space exploration to become a reality. Common rationales for exploring space include advancing scientific research, uniting different nations, ensuring the future survival of humanity and developing military and strategic advantages against other countries.

Space exploration has often been used as a proxy competition for geopolitical rivalries such as the Cold War. The early era of space exploration was driven by a “Space Race” between the Soviet Union and the United States, the launch of the first man-made object to orbit the Earth, the USSR’s Sputnik 1, on 4 October 1957, and the first Moon landing by the American Apollo 11 craft on 20 July 1969 are often taken as landmarks for this initial period. The Soviet space program achieved many of the first milestones, including the first living being in orbit in 1957, the first human spaceflight (Yuri Gagarin aboard Vostok 1) in 1961, the first spacewalk (by Aleksei Leonov) on 18 March 1965, the first automatic landing on another celestial body in 1966, and the launch of the first space station (Salyut 1) in 1971.

After the first 20 years of exploration, focus shifted from one-off flights to renewable hardware, such as the Space Shuttle program, and from competition to cooperation as with the International Space Station (ISS).

With the substantial completion of the ISS following STS-133 in March 2011, plans for space exploration by the USA remain in flux. Constellation, a Bush Administration program for a return to the Moon by 2020 was judged inadequately funded and unrealistic by an expert review panel reporting in 2009. The Obama Administration proposed a revision of Constellation in 2010 to focus on the development of the capability for crewed missions beyond low earth orbit (LEO), envisioning extending the operation of the ISS beyond 2020, transferring the development of launch vehicles for human crews from NASA to the private sector, and developing technology to enable missions to beyond LEO, such as Earth/Moon L1, the Moon, Earth/Sun L2, near-earth asteroids, and Phobos or Mars orbit. As of March 2011, the US Senate and House of Representatives are still working towards a compromise NASA funding bill, which will probably terminate Constellation and fund development of a heavy lift launch vehicle (HLLV).

In the 2000s, the People’s Republic of China initiated a successful manned spaceflight program, while the European Union, Japan, and India have also planned future manned space missions. China, Russia, Japan, and India have advocated manned missions to the Moon during the 21st century, while the European Union has advocated manned missions to both the Moon and Mars during the 21st century.

From the 1990s onwards, private interests began promoting space tourism and then private space exploration of the Moon (see Google Lunar X Prize).

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  • How to write a descriptive essay | Example & tips

How to Write a Descriptive Essay | Example & Tips

Published on July 30, 2020 by Jack Caulfield . Revised on August 14, 2023.

A descriptive essay gives a vivid, detailed description of something—generally a place or object, but possibly something more abstract like an emotion. This type of essay , like the narrative essay , is more creative than most academic writing .

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Table of contents

Descriptive essay topics, tips for writing descriptively, descriptive essay example, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about descriptive essays.

When you are assigned a descriptive essay, you’ll normally be given a specific prompt or choice of prompts. They will often ask you to describe something from your own experience.

  • Describe a place you love to spend time in.
  • Describe an object that has sentimental value for you.

You might also be asked to describe something outside your own experience, in which case you’ll have to use your imagination.

  • Describe the experience of a soldier in the trenches of World War I.
  • Describe what it might be like to live on another planet.

Sometimes you’ll be asked to describe something more abstract, like an emotion.

If you’re not given a specific prompt, try to think of something you feel confident describing in detail. Think of objects and places you know well, that provoke specific feelings or sensations, and that you can describe in an interesting way.

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space description essay

The key to writing an effective descriptive essay is to find ways of bringing your subject to life for the reader. You’re not limited to providing a literal description as you would be in more formal essay types.

Make use of figurative language, sensory details, and strong word choices to create a memorable description.

Use figurative language

Figurative language consists of devices like metaphor and simile that use words in non-literal ways to create a memorable effect. This is essential in a descriptive essay; it’s what gives your writing its creative edge and makes your description unique.

Take the following description of a park.

This tells us something about the place, but it’s a bit too literal and not likely to be memorable.

If we want to make the description more likely to stick in the reader’s mind, we can use some figurative language.

Here we have used a simile to compare the park to a face and the trees to facial hair. This is memorable because it’s not what the reader expects; it makes them look at the park from a different angle.

You don’t have to fill every sentence with figurative language, but using these devices in an original way at various points throughout your essay will keep the reader engaged and convey your unique perspective on your subject.

Use your senses

Another key aspect of descriptive writing is the use of sensory details. This means referring not only to what something looks like, but also to smell, sound, touch, and taste.

Obviously not all senses will apply to every subject, but it’s always a good idea to explore what’s interesting about your subject beyond just what it looks like.

Even when your subject is more abstract, you might find a way to incorporate the senses more metaphorically, as in this descriptive essay about fear.

Choose the right words

Writing descriptively involves choosing your words carefully. The use of effective adjectives is important, but so is your choice of adverbs , verbs , and even nouns.

It’s easy to end up using clichéd phrases—“cold as ice,” “free as a bird”—but try to reflect further and make more precise, original word choices. Clichés provide conventional ways of describing things, but they don’t tell the reader anything about your unique perspective on what you’re describing.

Try looking over your sentences to find places where a different word would convey your impression more precisely or vividly. Using a thesaurus can help you find alternative word choices.

  • My cat runs across the garden quickly and jumps onto the fence to watch it from above.
  • My cat crosses the garden nimbly and leaps onto the fence to survey it from above.

However, exercise care in your choices; don’t just look for the most impressive-looking synonym you can find for every word. Overuse of a thesaurus can result in ridiculous sentences like this one:

  • My feline perambulates the allotment proficiently and capers atop the palisade to regard it from aloft.

An example of a short descriptive essay, written in response to the prompt “Describe a place you love to spend time in,” is shown below.

Hover over different parts of the text to see how a descriptive essay works.

On Sunday afternoons I like to spend my time in the garden behind my house. The garden is narrow but long, a corridor of green extending from the back of the house, and I sit on a lawn chair at the far end to read and relax. I am in my small peaceful paradise: the shade of the tree, the feel of the grass on my feet, the gentle activity of the fish in the pond beside me.

My cat crosses the garden nimbly and leaps onto the fence to survey it from above. From his perch he can watch over his little kingdom and keep an eye on the neighbours. He does this until the barking of next door’s dog scares him from his post and he bolts for the cat flap to govern from the safety of the kitchen.

With that, I am left alone with the fish, whose whole world is the pond by my feet. The fish explore the pond every day as if for the first time, prodding and inspecting every stone. I sometimes feel the same about sitting here in the garden; I know the place better than anyone, but whenever I return I still feel compelled to pay attention to all its details and novelties—a new bird perched in the tree, the growth of the grass, and the movement of the insects it shelters…

Sitting out in the garden, I feel serene. I feel at home. And yet I always feel there is more to discover. The bounds of my garden may be small, but there is a whole world contained within it, and it is one I will never get tired of inhabiting.

If you want to know more about AI tools , college essays , or fallacies make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

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The key difference is that a narrative essay is designed to tell a complete story, while a descriptive essay is meant to convey an intense description of a particular place, object, or concept.

Narrative and descriptive essays both allow you to write more personally and creatively than other kinds of essays , and similar writing skills can apply to both.

If you’re not given a specific prompt for your descriptive essay , think about places and objects you know well, that you can think of interesting ways to describe, or that have strong personal significance for you.

The best kind of object for a descriptive essay is one specific enough that you can describe its particular features in detail—don’t choose something too vague or general.

Cite this Scribbr article

If you want to cite this source, you can copy and paste the citation or click the “Cite this Scribbr article” button to automatically add the citation to our free Citation Generator.

Caulfield, J. (2023, August 14). How to Write a Descriptive Essay | Example & Tips. Scribbr. Retrieved April 9, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/academic-essay/descriptive-essay/

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Astronomy: Everything you need to know

Astronomy was born out of humankind's ancient fascination with the star-studded sky.

The James Webb Space Telescope is the pinnacle of modern astronomy, capable of imaging the most distant reaches of the universe.

Astronomy FAQs

  • History: The beginnings
  • History of astronomy: The telescope
  • History of astronomy: Modern era

Types of astronomy

  • Astronomy across the spectrum
  • Problem with astronomy
  • Astronomy versus astrology

Jobs in astronomy

Additional resources, bibliography.

Astronomy is one of the oldest scientific disciplines that has evolved from the humble beginnings of counting stars and charting constellations with the naked eye to the impressive showcase of humankind's technological capabilities that we see today. 

Despite the progress astronomy has made over millennia, astronomers are still working hard to understand the nature of the universe and humankind's place in it. That question has only gotten more complex as our understanding of the universe grew with our expanding technical capabilities. 

As the depths of the sky opened in front of our increasingly sophisticated telescopes, and sensitive detectors enabled us to spot the weirdest types of signals, the star-studded sky that our ancestors gazed at turned into a zoo of mind-boggling objects including black holes , white dwarfs , neutron stars and supernovas . 

Related: Famous astronomers: How these scientists shaped astronomy

At the same time, the two-dimensional constellations that inspired the imagination of early sky-watchers were reduced to an optical illusion, behind which the swirling of galaxies hurtling through spacetime reveals a story that began with the Big Bang some 13.8 billion years ago. 

Here is how the story of astronomy and our understanding of the universe evolved. 

What is astronomy?

Astronomy uses mathematics, physics and chemistry to study celestial objects and phenomena. 

What are the four types of astronomy?

Astronomy cannot be divided solely into four types. It is a broad discipline encompassing many subfields including observational astronomy, theoretical astronomy, planetary science, astrophysics, cosmology and astrobiology.

What do you study in astronomy?

Those who study astronomy explore the structure and origin of the universe including the stars, planets, galaxies and black holes that reside in it. Astronomers aim to answer fundamental questions about our universe through theory and observation. 

What's the difference between astrology and astronomy?

Astrology is widely considered to be a pseudoscience that attempts to explain how the position and motion of celestial objects such as planets affect people and events on Earth. Astronomy is the scientific study of the universe using mathematics, physics, and chemistry.

History of astronomy: The beginnings

Most of today's citizens of planet Earth live surrounded by the inescapable glow of modern urban lighting and can hardly imagine the awe-inspiring presence of the pristine star-studded sky that illuminated the nights for ancient tribes and early civilizations. We can guess how drawn our ancestors were to that overwhelming sight from the role that sky-watching played in their lives.  

Ancient monuments, such as the 5,000 years old Stonehenge in the U.K., were built to reflect the journey of the sun in the sky, which helped keep track of time and organize life in an age that solely depended on seasons. Art pieces depicting the moon and stars were discovered dating back several thousand years, such as the "world's oldest star map," the bronze-age Nebra disk .

Ancient Assyro-Babylonians around 1,000 B.C. systematically observed and recorded periodical motions of celestial bodies, according to the European Space Agency (ESA), and similar records exist also from early China. In fact, according to the University of Oregon, astronomy can be considered the first science as it's the one for which the oldest written records exist.

Ancient Greeks elevated sky-watching to a new level. Aristarchus of Samos made the first (highly inaccurate) attempt to calculate the distance of Earth to the sun and moon, and Hipparchus sometimes considered the father of empirical astronomy, cataloged the positions of over 800 stars using just the naked eye. He also developed the brightness scale that is still in use today, according to ESA. 

A photograph of the Nebra Disc, one of the earliest known artefacts depicting the night sky.

History of astronomy: The arrival of the telescope

During the Middle Ages, the science of astronomy continued to advance in Asia and the Islamic world. Islamic scholars kept building on the knowledge of the Ancient Greeks, expanding the catalog introduced by Hipparchus. They also developed new tools for measuring the positions of objects in the sky such as the quadrant and the sextant, according to ESA .

The first true breakthrough in humankind's exploration of the universe, however, arrived with the invention of the telescope in the 17th century . Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei was an early adopter and developer of the technology, which enabled him to make major strides in the understanding of our solar system . 

Called "the father of modern science" by no other than the great Albert Einstein , Galileo was able to sketch the surface of the moon , discover the main moons of Jupiter , find sunspots on the sun, and much more, thanks to the telescope.

The invention of the telescope supercharged astronomy. Despite the objections of the Catholic Church, the notion that Earth wasn't the center of the universe but orbited the sun together with other planets and their moons could no longer be denied. 

Astronomy at that time played a key role in helping seafarers and travelers navigate the globe, and so, first, government-funded observatories, the Paris Observatory and the Royal Greenwich Observatory were established in 1667 and 1675 respectively with the goal of building more accurate stellar maps. 

In the 18th century, astronomers for the first time managed to calculate the distance of a nearby star, adding a third dimension to stellar catalogs. 

The advent of photography in the 19th century simplified the charting of the night sky and the stellar position catalogs quickly grew from a few thousand to tens of thousands of stars, according to ESA . The first photographs of the moon and sun were published in the 1840s followed by the images of the first star, Vega, about a decade later.

The discovery of spectroscopy , a discipline analyzing the ability of matter to split light into different wavelengths depending on its chemical composition, opened new and completely unexpected avenues of astronomical research in the second half of the 19th century. With spectroscopy, astronomers could study the chemical composition of celestial objects, first of those nearby, such as the moon and the sun, and later the more distant ones, including other stars and even galaxies. Suddenly, astronomy was not only about where things were located in the universe but also about what they were made of.

people gather around a telescope and look up at the stars in the sky.

History of astronomy: The boom of the modern era

Hand in hand with the overall rocket-speed technological progress that the world has witnessed since the beginning of the 20th century grew the ability of astronomers to see farther and analyze more precisely.

In the early 20th century, fast improvements in telescope technologies led astronomers for the first time to question whether the Milky Way was synonymous with the universe or only one of many starry universes scattered in space. American astronomer Edwin Hubble solved this question in the 1920s when he managed first to distinguish individual stars in the Andromeda nebula, today known as the Andromeda galaxy , and eventually calculate their distances from Earth. These stars were so much farther away than anything else in our galaxy that Hubble concluded that Andromeda is its own Milky Way. A new, much deeper universe suddenly unfolded in front of astronomers' eyes. 

Other "nebulas" were soon confirmed as galaxies. Within a decade, astronomers realized that these nebulas were speeding away from Earth the faster the farther away they were, according to Science News . This discovery led to the idea that the universe was expanding probably from the time of a giant explosion that had created it in the most distant past. The Big Bang theory was born.

The Second World War sped up technological progress even further, ushering in the era of spaceflight and exploration of the universe from space. What only a few decades prior would have been the stuff of science fiction was quickly becoming reality. 

In 1957, the U.S.S.R launched the first-ever satellite, Sputnik . From then on, more and more complex scientific instruments would be installed on satellites and the picture of the orbital environment around Earth would start to emerge. In 1962, NASA's Mariner 2 became the first spacecraft to visit another planet, Venus , and in 1964, the first radio astronomy satellite, the U.K.'s Ariel 2 , made it into orbit.

The space race of the 1960s culminated with the successful moon landings of the Apollo program . Scientists on Earth could, for the first time, hold in their hands' pristine pieces of rock from another celestial body. The U.S.S.R celebrated its own successes with the lunar rover Lunokhod , which analyzed 25 lunar soil samples with its onboard instruments. 

In 1968, NASA launched the Orbiting Astronomical Observatory 2 , nicknamed Stargazer, the first attempt to study the wider universe from space, according to USA. Today . Only a year later, plans for the Hubble Space Telescope started to shape up, although it would take more than two decades to get the grand telescope off the ground.

Since then, dozens of probes have been sent to study bodies in the solar system including planets, comets , moons and asteroids . Space telescopes, together with ever more powerful ground-based telescopes have revealed the star-studded sky in detail that the ancient tribesmen would never be able to even imagine. 

The James Webb Space Telescope , launched on Christmas Day 2021, represents the pinnacle of this eternal endeavor that started thousands of years ago and grew from humble beginnings. Yet, the more astronomers see, the more questions are arising and the answers to the grand questions of the nature of the universe and our place in it remain elusive. 

The Hubble Space Telescope flying above Earth pictured below.

In the past century or so, astronomy has been broadly split into two camps — observational astronomy (using telescopes and cameras to collect data about the night sky) and theoretical astronomy (using that data to analyze, model and theorize about how objects and phenomena work). 

They complement each other, yet within these two broad categories, modern astronomy includes many subsets, from astrometry to exoplanetology, that intrinsically overlap yet help explain the many things astronomers do. Here's what they all mean: 

  • Astrometry: This ancient branch of astronomy concerns precise calculations of the motions of the sun, the moon and the planets. It includes predictions of solar and lunar eclipses and meteor showers. It also includes exoplanetology, a relatively new and very exciting field that concerns itself with the discovery and characterization of planets outside of the solar system. 
  • Planetary astronomy: How did the solar system come to be? This is the central question penetrating planetary astronomy, which focuses on the formation, evolution and death of planets, moons and other objects in the solar system, it also includes planetary geology.  
  • Astrophysics : Astrophysicists apply the laws and theories of physics to astronomical observations. It's an attempt to understand the mechanism behind how the universe was created and how it has and will evolve.
  • Astrochemistry: Astrochemists study the composition and reactions of atoms, molecules and ions in space. 
  • Astrobiology: This emerging and, for now, largely theoretical field of astronomy is the study of life beyond Earth . 
  • Stellar astronomy: The study of the life cycle and structure of the sun and the stars, stellar astronomy concerns the classification of stars, and populations of stars. 
  • Galactic astronomy: astronomers study our galaxy, the Milky Way , while extragalactic astronomers peer outside of it to determine how these groups of stars form, change and die. 
  • Cosmology: Although it's sometimes used to mean astronomy, strictly speaking, cosmology refers to the science of the origin and nature of the universe. The key concept in cosmology is the Big Bang Theory , the most widely accepted explanation of how the universe began. Cosmology also includes purely theoretical subjects including string theory, dark matter and dark energy , and the notion of multiple universes.

Side by side comparison of the pillars of creation images. The left image from Hubble shows vast billowing dust plumes with some stars piercing through in the background while the JWST image on the right shows a 'crisper' view showing higher contrast in the clouds of dust and many more stars shining through the dust and in the background.

What are optical, infrared and radio astronomy?

All astronomy is the study of different wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum, which comprises radio, microwave, infrared, visible, ultraviolet, X-ray and gamma rays. To get the full picture of what's out there astronomers need to study various wavelengths of light. 

Optical astronomy is the study of celestial objects using telescopes that observe visible light. Infrared light can be detected outside of the Earth's atmosphere , so by space-based observatories like the Hubble Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope. Radio astronomy is the study of the sky in radio frequencies; radio telescopes detect and amplify radio waves from space.

The dipole antennas are arranged in several huge circles in the Australian desert.

The problem with astronomy

However they observe the universe, astronomers only ever get a snapshot of the planets, stars and galaxies they study. So although there are dozens of different branches of astronomy, in practice many of them must overlap for an astronomer to get as full a picture as possible of objects that exist for millions to billions of years. 

We're on the cusp of some tremendously exciting new technology that looks set to revolutionize astronomy. In addition to the James Webb Space Telescope a range of ground-breaking Earth-based telescopes is set to come online within this decade including the Vera Rubin Observatory all-sky survey, the Extremely Large Telescope and the Square Kilometre Array , the world's largest radio telescope.

Astronomers are about to see deeper into space to observe regions and objects never seen before. 

The difference between astronomy and astrology

an decorated and detailed astronomy and astrology map.

Astronomy and astrology have grown from the same roots. Ancient civilizations and early tribesmen believed that the sky held power over their lives and that by observing the motions of celestial bodies, one could learn about the future. 

The close bond between the two disciplines survived millennia. During the renaissance period, astronomers were frequently hired as personal advisers to monarchs to advise on decisions based on the positions of stars and planets, according to Astronomica .

But as the scientific method grew in strength over the subsequent centuries, astronomy and astrology have grown apart. While astronomy has become the domain of no-nonsense data-driven observations and verifiable predictions relying on the most cutting-edge technology, astrology was reduced to the realm of new-age superstition where considerably less educated future predictors use glass crystals and simplistic star charts to predict the path of a person's life. 

In fact, astronomers point out, that due to the irregularity of Earth's orbit, the position of the sun within the zodiac signs, which form the backbone of western astrology and which were identified centuries ago, no longer matches the actual position of the sun . So while you may have been told you were born in Taurus, you actually could have been born in Aries.

If star-gazing is your calling and you think of making it your life's path, you can find some useful insights about what it takes to be an astronomer on the website of the International Astronomical Union . The Royal Astronomical Society also has many useful resources in its Careers section.

If you are already further down the path and looking for a suitable opening based on your qualifications, the American Astronomical Society lists all kinds of openings all over the world on its jobs register site.

If you wonder how much you'd earn in an astronomy-related career, the SciJournal lists ten highest paying astronomy jobs .

Read this detailed three-part series by the European Space Agency about the history of astrometry from the earliest times, to the emergence of telescopes to modern space-based observations . This ScienceNews feature tells the story of the major leaps in astronomers' understanding of the universe in the first half of the 20th century. This article by the Royal Society provides a detailed overview of the evolution of astronomy in the post-war era . To learn more about the early days of the telescope and the role of Galileo Galileo in shaping modern astronomy, check this article by the Library of Congress .

European Space Agency, A history of astrometry - Part I - Mapping the sky from ancient to modern times, September 1, 2019         https://sci.esa.int/web/gaia/-/53196-the-oldest-sky-maps

European Space Agency, A history of astrometry - Part II - Telescopes ignites the race to measure stellar distances, September 1, 2019   https://sci.esa.int/web/gaia/-/53197-seeing-and-measuring-farther

European Space Agency, A history of astrometry - Part III - Astrometry moves to space: The mapmakers guide to the galaxy             https://sci.esa.int/web/gaia/-/53198-astrometry-in-space

The Royal Society, A brief history of astronomy, astrophysics and cosmology 1945-2000, June 9, 2022                                           https://royalsociety.org/blog/2022/06/brief-history-of-astronomy-astrophysics-and-cosmology-1945-2000/

ScienceNews, In 20th century, astronomers opened their minds to gazillions of galaxies, February 2, 2017                    https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/context/20th-century-astronomers-opened-their-minds-gazillions-galaxies

Library of Congress, Galileo and the Telescope, https://www.loc.gov/collections/finding-our-place-in-the-cosmos-with-carl-sagan/articles-and-essays/modeling-the-cosmos/galileo-and-the-telescope

Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: [email protected].

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Jamie Carter

Jamie is an experienced science, technology and travel journalist and stargazer who writes about exploring the night sky, solar and lunar eclipses, moon-gazing, astro-travel, astronomy and space exploration. He is the editor of  WhenIsTheNextEclipse.com  and author of  A Stargazing Program For Beginners , and is a senior contributor at Forbes. His special skill is turning tech-babble into plain English.

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space description essay

The Future of Space Exploration Essay

Space exploration is one of the most rapidly developing science which is known for its high financial implications and advanced cutting-edge technologies. Life beyond the planet was always an object of researches and investigation. Many new developments, equipment, and discoveries from space are notably useful and efficient for improving the level and the quality of life on the Earth. The history of that kind of researches started in ancient times when philosophers tried to investigate the night sky to find out the system of stars arrangement. Since then, studies in this field have progressed in a significant way, and now people even have their own space station in Earth orbit. Nowadays, there are specialized organizations such as the Aerospace Industries Association or American Astronautical Society the goal of which is to explore space. The purpose of this paper is to describe the particularities of space exploration, taking into consideration its advantages and disadvantages for humanity, ethical questions, and predictions about the future of this industry.

Space Exploration

It is an erroneous belief that the exploration of space does not have any impact on the life of ordinary humans. It improves the quality of the life of millions of people every day: the technologies designed for space studies are now used in the medical sphere and for conducting other experiments (Rai et al., 2016). Nevertheless, space research also poses many ethical questions to society concerning colonization, financial resources, and ecological issues. With the advancement of this science, increasingly more questions rest without any answers. For many people who are not very familiar with the topic, it seems to be a complete waste of the governmental budget and just a way for experts to entertain themselves.

In the era of Gagarin and first trips into space, being a cosmonaut was considered to be highly prestigious, respected, and, at the same time, romantic. At the present moment, this science went too far away frthe om basic understanding that people regret that their taxes are spent on the exploration of the place that they would never visit. The attitude of the researchers in this field is rather ambivalent; the main beneficial and negative points of space exploration would be covered in the next parts to make the argumentative and clear statement.

Benefits of Space Exploration

The investigation of space has many advantages for society despite the fact that they are not highly notable for an ordinary person. For example, space researches encourage studies of different types of science (Panesor, 2009). What is more, the young specialists in chemistry, biology, or engineering become interested in the space sphere (Panesor, 2009). It is profitable for both sides – students provide innovative ideas, and the research centers help the new generation of scientists to get the job and to be well-paid. The benefits of space exploration cannot be counted only in money because the impact on society is non-quantifiable. According to Jacksona et al. (2019), a woman plays a crucial role in space studies. Thanks to women-cosmonauts, the level of social inequality declined rapidly in the last decade of the 20th century. A variety of studies show that women and men think and act in contrasting ways. It helps the industry of space exploration to function in a more efficient way considering several distinct points of view.

Negatives of Space Exploration

Space exploration is often claimed to be the sphere for wasting a large sum of money. This industry is one of the most expensive because of the intellectual resources and high-priced equipment details (“Cost of Space Exploration,” 1961). Nonetheless, Baum (2009) proposes the idea of cost-beneficial analysis; from his point of view, it is necessary to keep in mind the ethical risks and the alternative options of the distribution of the budget. In his other study, he raises the issue of the problem of colonization (Baum, 2016). According to his research, if people cannot save nature on the planet, there is no use to attempt to find other places to live. Moreover, the ecological situation becomes significantly severe because of the desire of humans to leave the Earth.

It is important to mention that the cost of space explorations is not always high. It generally depends on the type of research and its goal (“International Space Exploration Coordination Group,” 2013). If the data of previous experiments were used, it would help to make the price for the surveys lower (Battat, 2012). However, it requires more time and effort from the staff and makes this task, not an easy one. Another disadvantage is that it takes years or even decades for inventions and technologies to be a part of the life of ordinary people. The negatives of space exploration are highly notable for society because they cannot see the real impact.

Increase in Space Exploration and Possible Future Impacts

The industry of space studies plays an essential role in the political, social, and economic spheres. If there were more money invested, it might result in a financial crisis in the country. Even though space exploration is supposed to have many non-material benefits and unexpected advantages in the nearest future. For example, the recent developments would be directly integrated into different fields of science. The robotics like the mechanic hand or neurotransmitter are now saving and improving thousands of Roboticsnks to space technologies. The level of intellectual needs in this sphere would encourage cultural and cognitive growth for many people interested in this area of study (Crawford, 2019). If the specialists would not find any place for colonization, it may influence the attitude of the society to the planet and its beautiful nature. People might become more accurate and carrying about the ecological situation on Earth.

Ways of Space Exploration with the Least Damage

First of all, the previous experience and results should be attentively analyzed to make the price of the new inventions lower. Secondly, there should be specialists in public relations who would explain the society why space explorations are too crucial and what are the benefits of it. Finally, space study should become a global issue for developed countries (Krichevsky, 2018). It would reduce the cost for each separate country and would make the process more efficient.

In the modern world, space exploration has its benefits and negatives. The advantages are mostly non-economical and concern the social sphere of life, while the disadvantages are centered around the high costs of the researches. Nevertheless, there are several ways to improve the financial situation and to make the price lower: by using the experience of previous generations or by optimizing the process. Ethical questions should also be taken into consideration and make humanity reflect on ecological and moral questions. Space study is one of the fascinating spheres of science in the 21st century.

  • Battat, J. A. (2012). Technology and architecture: Informing investment decisions for the future of human exploration [Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • Baum, S. (2009). Cost-benefit analysis of space exploration: Some ethical considerations. Space Policy, 25 (2), 75–80.
  • Baum, S. (2016). The ethics of outer space: A consequentialist perspective. The Ethics of Space Exploration, 2 (1), 109–123.
  • International Space Exploration Coordination Group. (2013). Benefits Stemming from Space Exploration .
  • American Association for the Advancement of Science. (1961). Cost of Space Exploration. Science, 133 (3470), 2055–2055.
  • Crawford, I. (2019). Widening perspectives: The intellectual and social benefits of Astrobiology, Big History, and the exploration of space. Journal of Big History, 3 (3), 205–224.
  • Jacksona, M. S., Knezek, P., Silimon-Hill, M. D., & Cross, M. A. (2019). Women in exploration: Lessons From the past as humanity reaches deep space. International Astronautical Congress, 1 (1), 1–15.
  • Krichevsky, S. (2018). Super global projects and environmentally friendly technologies used in space exploration: Realities and prospects of the Space Age. Philosophy and Cosmology, 20 (1), 92–105.
  • Panesor, T. (2009). Space: Exploration and exploitation in a modern society . Institute of physics. Web.
  • Rai, A., Robinson, J. A., Tate-Brown, J., Buckley, N., Zell, M., Tasaki, K., & Pignataro, S. (2016). Expanded benefits for humanity from the International Space Station. Acta Astronautica , 126 (2 ) , 463–474.
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IvyPanda. (2023, October 31). The Future of Space Exploration. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-future-of-space-exploration/

"The Future of Space Exploration." IvyPanda , 31 Oct. 2023, ivypanda.com/essays/the-future-of-space-exploration/.

IvyPanda . (2023) 'The Future of Space Exploration'. 31 October.

IvyPanda . 2023. "The Future of Space Exploration." October 31, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-future-of-space-exploration/.

1. IvyPanda . "The Future of Space Exploration." October 31, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-future-of-space-exploration/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "The Future of Space Exploration." October 31, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-future-of-space-exploration/.

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Mrinal Mandal

International English Language Testing System  (IELTS) is one of the world’s leading English language tests that evaluates the English language proficiency among non-native speakers. Writing test task 2 of the IELTS exam is a descriptive essay-type question based on topics related to the general interest. The word limit is a minimum of 250 words, and the task duration is 40 minutes. This article discusses ‘ space exploration, a commonly asked topic for IELTS essays, to help test takers prepare well for the test. Here are the tips for writing the best essay and two samples ‘space exploration’ essays that you can follow.

Table of Contents

Word limit for the essay, time duration, type of question, essay topics.

  • Sample 1: Advantages and Disadvantages of Space Exploration

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  • Essay sample 2:
  • Tips to write a winning IELTS essay

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Applicants will have to write an essay in IELTS task 2 in response to a statement. The minimum word limit should be 250 words. There is no upper word limit. Make sure you are not writing less than 250 words, or it will be counted as an incomplete task. 

The time duration allotted for the writing task 2 essay is 40 minutes. You need to manage your time, so make sure you plan and write the essay within the stipulated time. Appear for mocks to work on your writing speed. 

In IELTS Essay writing, applicants need to write an essay while responding to a particular premise, statement, or argument. It is an informal descriptive essay, where the applicants need to prepare a 250-word write-up based on opinion, facts, arguments, and experiences. All the parts of the question need to be answered in the essay. 

The essay topics are based on general interest and academic modules. It is important to practice essay writing in common genres like art, education, crime, space, culture, tradition, social problems, and environment. 

Samples on Space Exploration Essay IELTS

Sample 1: advantages and disadvantages of space exploration .

Space exploration is the detailed exploration of space, the solar system, and the universe. It is explored by robotic spacecraft and spaceflights. Earlier ‘Space Race’ was only popular between the United States and the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union achieved many milestones in its early days. It is a huge part of American history. On 20th July 1969, Neil Armstrong along with Buzz Aldrin won the space race. Yet, there are many advantages and disadvantages of space exploration. Many opine that the space program costs high, and some take it as an invention.

Advantages of Space exploration

Inventions:

The global society has benefited through new inventions. The additional research conducted by NASA helped to benefit society in different ways. The discoveries benefit transportation, medicine, computer management, agriculture technology, and consumer goods. The space program helped in GPS technology, breast cancer treatment, lightweight breathing systems, Teflon fiberglass, etc. 

Employment:

One cannot deny the fact that space exploration generates numerous jobs globally. Spending less and making it more cost-effective is a better way to approach space exploration. Space research programs add too much to science, technology, and communication in the present unemployment scenario. And this results in a massive employment generation. 

Understanding: 

Time to time-space exploration programs and satellite missions by NASA help unravel the undiscovered facts about our universe. Scientists better understand the nature, atmosphere of Earth, and other space bodies. These are the exploration programs that make us aware of future natural disasters and other related predictions. It also paves the path to save our almighty universe from time to time. 

Conclusion: Every coin has two sides. To sustain on Earth, one has to face the challenge and overcome it. Space exploration is a vital activity that cannot be neglected but can be improved with technology.

Disadvantages of Space exploration

Pollution is one of the alarming concerns in space exploration. Every year, many satellites are launched in space, and not all of them return. Over time, the remains of such instances become debris and float in the air. Old satellites, different types of equipment, launching pads, pieces of rockets are all adding to pollutants. Space debris pollutes space in many ways. Space exploration is not only harming the environment but also space.  

A national space exploration program costs high. Many individuals argue that space mission programs are cost-effective. It must be noted that NASA in the recent program, celebrated its 30th anniversary with an expenditure of $196.5 billion.

Space exploration is not a bed of roses. Many historical events prove the danger associated with tragic incidents. One must focus on the incident on January 28, 1986, with the Challenger space shuttle. Within just 73 seconds, the shuttle exploded and resulted in a massive loss of life and property. 

Moreover, there are different opinions on the advantages of space exploration with more innovations and improved technologies.

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Essay sample 2: 

The first man to walk on the moon claimed it was a step forward for humankind. However, it has made little difference in most people’s lives.

To what extent do you agree or disagree?

A greater number of people believe that space exploration has not made enough contribution to the lives of people. It has not made a sufficient impact if the expenses associated with it are justified. As per my understanding, various questions arise out of this, but if considered on an overall basis, the scientific impact is very encompassing. 

A man to the moon and expensive satellites and telescopes had no impact on the life of an average wage earner or the one without proper meals a day. A large population is still vulnerable and facing various economic challenges. Many enjoy watching the man traveling to the moon, or the NASA videos, but there is no justification for the huge amount of money that was spent over the years for space exploration. It could have made a lot of difference if these investments were directed towards employment, medicine, education, infrastructure, and culture. 

Nonetheless, the impacts are directly related to science and culture. A man on the moon was a moment of utilitarian concern. It was a powerful incident that encouraged countless lives to attain achievements. Space exploration has led to concrete and fruitful innovations. For example, new aspects of entertainment, microchip, the internet, and countless other discoveries. From small to huge, there are several discoveries, and the most important one can be staying connected throughout the globe. We are truly indebted to the funding of space exploration for all of these innovations and discoveries. 

Far from being utter waste, as some belief it to be, space exploration has been the reason for the progress of humankind. It must receive more support and advancement.

Tips to write a winning IELTS essay 

  • The word length of the essay should be at least 250 words. There is no upper word limit. However, if you write less than 250 words, you may end up submitting an incomplete essay. The idea should be to write an essay of a minimum of 250 words. 
  • The essay topic will have more than one question. All the parts of the questions are to be answered. For example, for the topic ‘crime is unavoidable’, here you may have questions like 1. Speak in favor and against this topic, 2. Give your opinion, 3. Suggest some measures to avoid crime. Now, this topic has three parts, and all the parts are to be answered; only then the essay will be complete. 
  • Maintain the flow in writing. You cannot derail your thoughts and write an essay that is not relevant to the topic. The essay should be in complete sync with the question. The ideas in the essay should be directly related to the question. Use examples, experiences, and ideas that you can connect well with. 
  • Organize your essay using linking phrases and words in a limited manner. Avoid using normal linking words, and go for adverbial phrases.
  • The entire essay should be divided into small paragraphs with a minimum of two sentences each. There should be three parts to your essay, introduction, body, and conclusion. 
  • Do not fill your essay with too many complicated and long words. Use collocations and idioms correctly. You must have a clear idea of using words and contexts.
  • The essay should be grammatically correct. There should not be errors in terms of spelling, punctuation, and tenses. To avoid grammatical errors, avoid long and complicated sentences. Write short and crisp sentences. 
  • Practice various essay questions like to agree/ disagree, discuss two opinions, advantages & disadvantages, causes, and solutions, causes and effects, and problem- solution. 
  • Write a good introduction. The introduction should offer a clear idea about the rest of the content. An introduction is an important part of creating an impression and developing interest. 
  • Use facts, statistics, and data if necessary. If you are unsure about the data and numbers, it is better to avoid any factual information. Do not write anything that you are not very sure about. 
  • The body of the essay should be descriptive and contain all the points, facts, and information in a detailed manner. 
  • The conclusion is prominent. The way you conclude your essay plays an important role in boosting your IELTS band. 
  • Take care of the spelling mistakes. Do not write complicated spellings that you are not sure of. It is better to use simple and common words. 
  • Do not write any informal or personal comments. It is not permitted strictly. 
  • Proofread your essay once you are done writing. It helps you to scan minor and major issues in terms of grammatical and spelling errors. 

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Mrinal Mandal is a study abroad expert with a passion for guiding students towards their international education goals. He holds a degree in mechanical engineering, earned in 2018. Since 2021, Mrinal has been working with upGrad Abroad, where he assists aspiring students in realizing their dreams of studying abroad. With his expertise and dedication, he empowers individuals to navigate the complexities of international education, making their aspirations a reality.

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50, 100, And 300 Words Essay on Space In English

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Introduction

Children are interested in space because it is a fascinating topic. It generates curiosity and interest among us when we hear about space missions or astronauts flying into space. In our minds, there are many questions. 

At takeoff, how intense is the acceleration for astronauts? When you are floating weightlessly in space, how does it feel? What is the sleeping environment like for astronauts? How do they eat? When viewed from space, how does Earth look? In this essay on space, you will find the answers to all of these questions. To gain a deeper understanding of space, students should read it.

50 Words Essay on Space

Space is the area outside the earth. Planets, meteors, stars, and other celestial objects can be found in space. Meteors are objects that fall from the sky. There is a lot of silence in space. If you scream loudly enough in space, no one will hear you.

Air does not exist in space! What a strange experience that would be! Yes, indeed! Basically, it’s just a vacuum. No sound waves can travel in this space and no sunlight can scatter in it. A black blanket can sometimes cover space.

There is some life in space. Stars and planets are separated by a vast distance. Gas and dust fill this gap. Celestial bodies also exist in other constellations. There are many of them, including our planet.

100 Words Essay on Space

The sound of your scream can’t be heard in space. The vacuum in space is caused by the lack of air. Vacuums do not permit the propagation of sound waves.

A 100 km radius around our planet marks the beginning of “outer space.”. Space appears as a black blanket dotted with stars due to the absence of air to scatter sunlight.

There is a common belief that space is empty. However, this is not true. Massive amounts of thinly spread gas and dust fill the vast gaps between stars and planets. A few hundred atoms or molecules per cubic meter can be found even in the most empty parts of space.

Radiation in space can also be dangerous to astronauts in many forms. Solar radiation is a major source of infrared and ultraviolet radiation. A high-energy X-ray, gamma ray, and cosmic ray particle can travel as fast as light if it comes from a distant star system.

space description essay

Related Topics For Students

50, 100, 500 Words Essay on Entertainment In English

  • 150, 300, And 500 Words Essay On Crime In English

300 Words Essay on Space

Our countrymen have always been fascinated by things related to space. It was only through imagination and stories that man could dream of traveling in space when it was absolutely impossible to do so.

Space Travel is Now Possible

Until the twentieth century, the man had significant success in space research, giving this dream a simple form.

India has grown so much in science in the 21st century that many mysteries of space have been solved by the country. Additionally, visiting the moon has become very easy now, which was the dream of many long ago. As a side note, human spaceflight began in 1957.

First Life in Space

‘Layaka’ was sent into space for the first time via this vehicle to explore how space affects animals.

A spacecraft named Explorer was launched by the United States of America on January 31, 1958, giving another title to the world of space.

An enormous magnetic field above the Earth was to be discovered through this vehicle, along with its effects on Earth as a whole.

First Passenger

Our space research history is remembered for the event of July 20, 1969. Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin became the first Americans to set foot on the moon on this day.

Sitting on a spacecraft named ‘Apollo-11’, he reached the surface of the moon. A third passenger in this spacecraft was Michael Collins.

He said, “Everything is beautiful” when he first landed on the moon. With this, he became the first person in the world to land on the moon.

Conclusion,

It would have been impossible to have imagined that the era of space tourism would also come in the future following the dawn of the space age. The first space tourist in the world was India’s Dennis Tito in 2002.

Long And Short Essay On Water Conservation In English

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space description essay

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Description in space: Geography and narrative form

Description and experience of the form of landscape are the core of geographical methodology and are explicitly theorized in humanist geography, particularly by Edward Relph. This essay outlines how his ideas about “seeing, thinking, and describing” – particularly the primacy of description – are relevant to a reformation for how narratologists handle the relationship between fiction and environment. Though the narratologist deals with reading and analyzing descriptions rather than producing descriptions as the geographer does, the phenomenological relationship between self, environment, and description of the latter can curiously expand what we normally think of as the reader-text dyad in the former. This new perspective is put into practice by studying three examples from American novels that offer descriptions of the environment from above.

Why take the trouble to represent what we already possess – what we now see with our eyes and now feel under our feet? Not only does representing landscape in paintings and photographs seem cognitively greedy (as if such representation were more important or more satisfying than experiential immersion), but it also seems to be unnecessary. What need is there to represent a landscape vista that is enticing or entrancing in itself, engaging us fully? Does not the vast implacable river below me speak for itself? Is this not enough already? Why move to representation when the experience of landscape is dense enough, and frequently pleasing enough, in its own way? Why seek other ways, particularly representational ones that appear to signify a secondary status and that only complicate matters further? Why re-present what is already presented so effectively and thoroughly in ordinary direct experience? Casey 2002: xiii

Buried in a note in Gerald Prince’s recent commentary in PMLA is the creative plea for literary critics to turn to “narrative in space” rather than “space in narrative.” This is my starting point, particularly his suggestion that this implies a more “expansive” field of study ( Prince 2016: 1494). I agree: “space in narrative” replicates a counterintuitive sense that somehow a single narrative – or narrative, in theory – can enclose whatever “space” is within its identifiable and determinate structure. Narrative in space , however, resonates more with everyday experiences of encountering and interacting with narrative while navigating the environment in daily life.

But a problem emerges that seems to precede thinking about narrative in space: what about description? This call to invert our habits as narratologists may imply another counterintuitive enclosure, as description of and in space is subordinated to narrative. Geography, on the other hand, foregrounds description, with a productively broad understanding of the term. In this essay, I will look at description in narratology alongside an introduction to the function of description in humanist geography, and then present how renewed attention to description in narratology can help apply insights from geography to studying the form of literary description as well as the environment. I will pace this study of narrative in space through descriptive images from O Pioneers! by Willa Cather (1913), The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles (1949), and City of Glass by Paul Auster (1985).

1 Description in narratology

An answer to the questions from my epigraph comes with Edward S. Casey’s splitting of “re-presentation.” He supplements the static, mimetic suggestions of representation with the idea that aesthetic engagements with the environment create effects of “re-implacement,” where a place is re-formed as it appears with the aesthetic object ( Casey 2002: 30). This re-implacement not only sets a place down into a new context, but it stages representation itself, making representation of representation a primary aesthetic experience:

just as the object of description thereby becomes a represented object, so the activity of description sets this object over against us within a nexus of pictorial horizons. The world-as-picture is a world that has become a totality of objects that solicit us to remake them – which is to say, to represent them in their very representedness – by our own descriptive and depictive actions. ( Casey 2002: 236)

While Casey refers to pictures – maps and landscape painting – something similar applies to literary images when it comes to the act of describing the environment. Casey addresses literary engagements with landscape in his epilogue, noting that, in prose fiction, “at least a tacit reference to landscape [...] holds narrated events together , furnishing for them a common matrix of interconnected place” ( Casey 2002: 274). As I argue with the geographical (at least Relph’s) definition of description, these concepts also apply to literary description, with some sensitivity to the idea that we are dealing with imagination and not with perception when we turn from pictorial or figurative art to language and poetic images.

A “re-implacement” from actual and perceptual experience into fictional and imaginal experience is another interpretation of what Prince’s narrative in space could mean. This suggests an extension of Casey’s claim: the manifest form of any narrative is afforded by the environment in which it is in the process of re-implacing, an experience the reader follows as he or she encounters the form of environment re-presented in literary description. Thus, narrative in space implies that, in a sense, narrative form is dependent on the affordances of the spatial form of landscape. [1] This landscape, of course, varies, which is why the case studies to follow all are examples of that most popular of vantages, the view from above. [2] Through following the form of this familiar landscape, we can follow the possibilities of how narrative can exist in this space.

Prior work, though, has productively opened the door for this biocentric point of departure. The narratological norm is to refer to perceptual, and so anthropocentric, models of spatial representation in discourse. For David Herman (2002: 293–299), it is a mental model of the projected storyworld; for Monika Fludernik (2014; 2016), it is dependent on psycholinguistic capabilities of description. But recently a breach of ecocriticism by narrative theory has suggested the possibilities of a biocentric approach to narrative in space, triangulated by postcolonial studies ( James 2015), cognitive approaches (von Messner 2017), and New Materialism ( Marcussen 2017). Despite this recent work, the concurrent tide of non-anthropocentric approaches to literary criticism across fields has not entered narratological currency. A “geographical narratology,” for me, is directly akin to this interest in what narratology can contribute to ecocriticism, and vice versa.

One reason for the absence of this general turn toward the nonhuman in narratology ( Herman 2018 excepted), particularly on a methodological level, is part of the legacy of subordinating description, as a text-type, to narrative discourse. This is, of course, somewhat of a false dilemma, as narratology is the study of narrative, after all. But the specificity of the function of description seems to have been collateral damage in the development of post-classical narratology. Fludernik claims some ground for description in her analysis of oral vs. written discourse, but the way in which she constructs its potential form leaves little to be developed as it is cordoned off from narrativity proper: “Description no longer operates as that functional entity which occurs in the slot reserved for embedded orientation but becomes an extendable and separate discourse type in its own right” (1991: 59). Though this seems to privilege description as a unique form that perhaps clashes with and disrupts narrative form, it ends up minimizing description’s potential in a model of the reader’s behavior. This implication is not very different from previous classical models, such as Franz Stanzel’s statement that the dynamics between, for example, description, dialogue, and figural consciousness representation in a text are “only meaningful when they are related to their specific function within the narrative context” (74). Like Fludernik, he does not mean to suggest erasure of description by referring to its specific function, but this has the effect of implying that “specific” means “certain” or easily determinable. His absurd test of a description’s precision (or perspectival opacity) as equivalent to its drawability (120) suggests that his definition is primarily perceptual: defining description’s form is dependent on how realistic it seems and its reception is measured with the valence of its dis/orientation.

The essential difference in an approach interested first of all in the geographical environment is that it drops the anthropocentric mandate to, as Alexander Gelley (1977) puts it, treat descriptions “as micro-narratives which need to be assimilated to a larger narrative pattern” (77). Descriptions embedded in narrative do not primarily serve to generate verisimilitude or to place the characters and the narrating figure in space, though “description” as used in narratology so often denotes the “antechamber of the inner world,” as Stanzel (1984: 74) configures it. In this way, description has been recuperated by an anthropocentric bias to become “evidence” for how characters think, where they are located, what they are feeling, and what they see and know .

Contra the association of description with concrete perceptual fact, what makes description unique and distinct from narration is its indeterminate form. Philippe Hamon (1981) recognized this material power of description: “Description, as usual, appears as a threatening area [...]. [D]escription might be that place in the text where the generative power of language might show itself most clearly and as quite unmanageable” (25). This idea of the “unmanageability of description” captures its essential indeterminacy, even when put in the service of realism. Hamon (2004) additionally discusses the mimetic default for description in realism as paradoxical: “description is the point where the narrative comes to a temporary halt, while continuing to organize itself [...]: it can thus be seen that the fundamental characteristic of realist discourse is to deny, to make impossible, the narrative, any narrative” (332).

There is a cliché that description is vital, yet dispensable. This can be stated positively: description is medium-specific and has an essentially open structure, while narrative structure is transmedial and fits into recognizable forms. This is one general way to explain the critical habit of looking at space , usually thought of as abstract, as opposed to “place” – in narrative – a well-charted structure that can accommodate “new” categories. Thinking about narrative in space , though, does not fit into these narratological preconceptions.

One field that attempts to subvert these categories is geocriticism. The methodology follows how narratives exist in space, as part of the “multifocalization” of particular real spaces in many different texts; as Bertrand Westphal (2007) states: “By taking a geocritical perspective, we opt for a plural point of view, which is located at the crossroads of distinct representations. In this way, we contribute to the process of determining a common space, born from and touching upon different points of view.” (114). Geocriticism develops a literary methodology for studying how cultural spaces are constructed, but despite its shared interest in Earth, I do not think “determining a common space” is necessarily the goal of a geographical narratology. What still comes out as undertheorized is description. Even if individual narrative form is subordinated to a larger, comparative superstructure of multiple narrative forms as they are organized by their references to “real spaces,” as in geocriticism, we gloss over the impact and value of the individual, subjective experience of reading descriptions of spaces that are recognizable, or not. This, again inadvertently, foregrounds perceptual space over imaginary space, grafting the ideal of the “final product” of a geographical approach (a determinate map) onto the process (indeterminacy in the reading experience).

Let us make this concrete by looking at a descriptive “re-implacement” in Willa Cather’s O Pioneers! :

On one of the ridges of that wintry waste stood the low log house in which John Bergson was dying. The Bergson homestead was easier to find than many another, because it overlooked Norway Creek, a shallow, muddy stream that sometimes flowed, and sometimes stood still, at the bottom of a winding ravine with steep, shelving sides overgrown with brush and cottonwoods and dwarf ash. This creek gave a sort of identity to the farms that bordered upon it. Of all the bewildering things about a new country, the absence of human landmarks is one of the most depressing and disheartening. The houses on the Divide were small and were usually tucked away in low places; you did not see them until you came directly upon them. Most of them were built of the sod itself and were only the unescapable ground in another form. The roads were but faint tracks in the grass, and the fields were scarcely noticeable. The record of the plow was insignificant, like the feeble scratches on stone left by prehistoric races, so indeterminate that they may, after all, be only the markings of glaciers, and not a record of human strivings. In eleven long years John Bergson had made but little impression upon the wild land he had come to tame. It was still a wild thing that had its ugly moods; and no one knew when they were likely to come, or why. Mischance hung over it. Its Genius was unfriendly to man. The sick man was feeling this as he lay looking out of the window, after the doctor had left him, on the day following Alexandra’s trip to town. There it lay outside his door, the same land, the same lead-colored miles. He knew every ridge and draw and gully between him and the horizon. To the south, his plowed fields; to the east, the sod stables, the cattle corral, the pond, – and then the grass. (Cather 7–8)

This is certainly an “unmanageable” description. Conventionally, this passage from O Pioneers! is an instance of zero focalization, as there is no initial perspectival seat introduced. It is the extradiegetic narrator “setting the scene,” as we would conventionally see it here at the beginning of the novel. There is a strong dynamic of “high” and “low” and a sense that this image is from the perspective of a lifted vantage, anchored by the focal point of the Bergson farm. As this image unfolds in the second paragraph, it is ostensibly given a seat in Bergson’s consciousness, as his thoughts are framed more clearly when he is introduced lying in bed and the capitalized “Genius” defies the non-anthropocentric description before this break “into” his mind.

A conventional interpretation is to background the initial description as “setting” or, by contrast, treat it retroactively as a bleak projection from Bergson’s dying consciousness onto an unfriendly landscape, as internally focalized. An ecocritical move amidst some Cather scholars has started to resist habits of analyzing space in narrative that are constitutive of representations of setting or impressions from characters’ minds. Guy Reynolds (2003) calls Cather’s non-anthropocentric descriptive method “organic modernism,” where she uses the environment “as an analog for novelistic form;” this is more than a simple analogy, as Reynolds claims that in Cather’s fiction “landscape might even create form” (180).

The description before the break “into” the Bergson house is assertively negative. It presents an oscillation of what is possibly seen, what is unlikely to be seen, and what is impossible to determine as “seen.” While the first part of the description establishes “seeing” – this view from above – as the dominant paradigm of understanding, visual primacy is dropped after the organizing feature – the creek – is introduced. This manifests in an identifiable shift in tone that starts with, “Of all the bewildering things...” Inserting the creek as a built form destabilizes all of the other, “human,” lines on the land. The rest of the description escapes a binary between a/perspectival focalization as it emphasizes that, from the focal point of the land, all lines on the surface are indeterminate marks, whether it be creek, road, plowed fields, or the glacial record. In the next paragraph focalization is reflexively “staged,” in the sense that its normal ability to organize the material environment into realistic description fails because it accounts only for human perception and not the indeterminate form of the environment. At this point in the novel, human perspective-taking fails alongside human attempts at organizing the form of the environment into agricultural forms. A narratology tuned to this acute, literary “re-implacement” is less interested in how Bergson’s “impressions” effect the description than in how this image displaces human perspective as it articulates the form of the environment.

Gaston Bachelard puts it well: “Readers ‘skip the descriptions’ because no one has taught them to appreciate ‘literary imagination’” (1988: 179). Narratology has made the mistake of interpreting this supposed readerly habit into the structure of the literary work, assuming that it is perception and perspective-taking that is at stake, not imagination. A geographical narratology foregrounds the value of literary imagination as part of the exchange between geographical and narratological method. Because the act of describing and the experience of description are uniquely collapsed in reading, “teaching” readers how to encounter literary descriptions also has direct relevance to the reading of spaces, equally to geographers doing research or encountering the environment in daily life.

2 Description in geography

Perhaps an interdisciplinary reach toward geography can help bring description to narratology. Edward Relph identifies his process as a geographer as steps through a phenomenological relationship between himself and the environment. His work begins with “seeing, thinking, and describing,” a process of “looking carefully at landscapes, allowing my thinking to respond to what I see, and then attempting to describe clearly the character of these landscapes” (1984: 212). This is less about what the geographer is doing than about what one has done . Seeing, thinking, and describing as modes of analysis cannot really be separated [3] and identifying them at all means looking back at one’s experience of the environment and recounting the value of memories, impressions, and notes.

While Relph confidently identifies this method and yet still hesitates at the three categories’ conceptual salience, he is also defining the essential push-pull relationship between a subject and the landscape being described. In Place and Placelessness, he adds a third term to a tenet of phenomenology: “it might be said that all consciousness is not merely consciousness of something, but of something in its place” (1976: 42). This is not just an expansion of intentionality to include something’s abstract context; it implies that our experience of access to the world and to objects and their emplacement are intertwined. What follows is that, for the geographer, “only by a distorting act of imagination can we separate ourselves from a landscape and treat it as object” (1984: 221). The form of the environment is inseparable from the geographer who sees, thinks, and describes with it to locate its meaning and identify its structure.

The situation is quite different with literary “environments” accessible only through their description and subsequent imagination. While Relph implies that this “distorting act of imagination” betrays accurate description of the environment, literary images that describe the environment are, rather, a performative “distortion.” As literary narrative collides with the form of environment, what results are “distorted,” meaning not perceptually realistic, literary descriptions. [4] Consider the role of one of the protagonists, Port, in The Sheltering Sky :

He ceased listening. They had left the town, traversed the valley, and were climbing a large, bare hill on the other side. As they swung around one of the many S-curves, he realized with a start that he was looking straight at the Turkish fortress, small and perfect as a toy at this distance, on the opposite side of the valley. Under the wall, scattered about on the yellow earth, were several tiny black tents; which one he had been in [...] he could not say, for the staircase was not visible from here. [...] Again and again the valley came into view, always a little smaller, a little farther away, a little less real. The Mercedes roared like a plane; there was no muffler on the exhaust pipe. The mountains were there ahead, the sebkha was spread out below. He turned to get a last look at the valley; the shape of each tent was still discernible, and he realized that the tents looked like the mountain peaks behind them on the horizon. As he watched the heat-covered landscape unfold, his thoughts took an inward turn, dwelt briefly on the dream that still preoccupied him. At the end of a moment, he smiled; now he had it. [...] He wondered why it had upset him; it was a simple, classic dream. The connections were all clear in his head. Their particular meaning with regard to his own life scarcely mattered. For in order to avoid having to deal with relative values, he had long since come to deny all purpose to the phenomenon of existence – it was more expedient and comforting. He was pleased to have solved his little problem. He looked around the countryside; they were still climbing, but they had gone over the first crest. About them now were barren, rounded hills, without details to give them scale. And on every side was the same uneven, hard line of the horizon, with the blinding white sky behind. (Bowles 57–58)

This second image offers a more concrete presentation of aerial description. It plays less on the inadequacy of human perspective-taking – the juxtaposition as clash of separated interior and exterior perspectives in the Cather passage – and instead foregrounds juxtaposition of character and environment as a confusing intermingling. Here we have a mobile perspective, definitely seated “in the mind” of Port as he rides in a car up and out of the valley in which he had just spent the night wandering, now driving towards the extended desert. Similar to how Reynolds foregrounds the agency of the environment in the construction of Cather’s novels, Alexa Weik von Mossner (2013) argues that in The Sheltering Sky “the Sahara is in fact both a symbolic landscape – and thus a socially constructed realm – and a physically and geographically present agent that acts directly on the bodies, emotions, and cognitions of the protagonists” (224). I will take this further and say that the Sahara is the final agent of the novel as an aesthetic object, not just for its embedded human figures. The Sahara as an object of “seeing, thinking, and describing” in its vast extent, available in moments such as this when a character is able to see it from above, projects a certain type of thought.

The progressive lift up to an ever higher vantage affords Port’s ascension into this poetic image, out of reality, and travelling “into” his dreams. An interpretation of a dream intrudes upon his act of “seeing” the valley, and so he follows the “thinking” this affords as it comes to the description of his own life. Notably, he denies narrativization of his life; he refuses to recall the past and denies ordering past events’ meaning in his life. That his anti-narrative reflections occur in the midst of this aerial description is not incidental. As the car climbs and he surveys the scene below, the shrinking valley becomes “a little less real,” with every turn in the road shading the survey of his life. The indeterminate landscape is a clearer image of Port’s “interior” than the conventional psychoanalytic “internalization” of the environment as it helps him interpret his dreams. Bowles slides out of modernist convention as described by the majority of critics (similar to Cather’s ironic biocentricism) by refusing “enclosure” to be the model for narrative. Not even the form of the journey – a kind of linear enclosure – can be used to adequately describe A Sheltering Sky , as most of the connections between places have to do with chaotic missed connections rather than the transit of events across places. I will discuss narrative form and enclosure in the next section, but here we can consider how the openness of the described landscape presents a challenge, in general, to representation. When literature is the “environment” to which the subject is oriented, Relph’s model is reversed: in literary descriptions landscapes are described (already embedded in the text), thought (or read), and seen (or “seen ” through the imaginary). Reversing Relph’s steps to fit his phenomenological method for geography into a literary geography means considering the form of description as primary, while “thought” and “sight” follow from what each specific description affords.

3 The form of the text

In these analyses what emerges is one of the essential differences between narratology and geography. Narratology treats landscape as enclosed within narrative and pinned down by referential description, while the geographer’s understanding of the landscape is open to interaction with the subject, something to be described and so involved in active re-implacement. Spatial description – “space in narrative” – as it is understood in Herman (2002), Ryan (2003), and Dennerlein (2009) is a positive mental model for the relationship between the reader and the text. For Ryan this model is a map and for Dennerlein it is a container, basically a room. These conceptual metaphors determine what follows in their arguments, the development of new concepts to be identified and applied to interpretation (such as Ryan et al.’s [2016] expansion of storyworld to “narrative universe,” another container, just a larger one).

We can see critiques of conventional, egocentric models of spatiality in New Formalism, particularly in Caroline Levine’s work since Forms, but there is surprising overlap with geographers interested in aesthetics as well:

Thinking about representations of space in generic terms is an attempt to relate the geography in the text (places, settings, landscapes) to the geography surrounding it, so to speak. This approach formulates a series of questions about the constraints of the creation of a text and their implications for its reception, suggesting that generic conventions are also relevant at both ‘ends’ of the literary process. [...] Reading spatiality in terms of genre is therefore a form of invitation to step outside the apparent stability and closure of the written text. (Brosseau 20)

Here Marc Brosseau is referring to how particular places are constructed across texts of the same genre, such as cities in crime novels. He notes that the experience of the reader in relation to the formal structures of the text and their represented environments is essential. Again, the primacy of Relph’s “seeing, thinking, describing” subject recurs. [5] Recent work in New Formalism suggests the same: we should consider how cultural forms such as enclosed campuses, rhythmic labor, and networked subcultures also pervade aesthetic forms. As it pertains to “enclosure,” the form most relevant to the description/narration binary discussed here, Levine notes:

To say that narratives enclose or contain social material is to use a spatial figure to describe stories. This implies that narratives hold their materials together in the same way as funerary urns, when in fact they are forms unfolding over time. The term closure thus elides the different affordances of narrative and spatial closure. [...] What if we understood literary texts not as unified but as inevitably plural in their forms – bringing together multiple ordering principles, both social and literary, in ways that do not and cannot repress their differences? From this perspective, could one formal element of a text ever manage to contain and control the others? (40)

I will add, which is to be expected at this point, that we can also consider the ordering principles of landscape as part of this plurality of forms. Description of the environment, thus, is not another form “enclosed” within unified narrative, but an opening where the imaginary valence of a real environment is accessed by the reader.

To illustrate, we can see how familiar postmodern forms in City of Glass collapse spatial and descriptive levels through metalepsis, alongside the familiar collapse of narrative levels:

For no particular reason that he was aware of, Quinn turned to a clean page of the red notebook and sketched a little map of the area Stillman had wandered in. Then, looking carefully through his notes, he began to trace with his pen the movements Stillman had made on a single day – the first day he had kept a full record of the old man’s wanderings. The result was as follows. [...] Quinn was struck by the way Stillman had skirted around the edge of the territory, not once venturing into the center. The diagram looked a little like a map of some imaginary state in the Midwest. Except for the series of curlicues that represented Stillman’s wanderings in Riverside Park, the picture also resembled a rectangle. On the other hand, given the quadrant structure of New York streets, it might have been a zero or the letter ‘O.’ Quinn went on to the next day and decided to see what would happen. The results were not at all the same. This picture made Quinn think of a bird, a bird of prey perhaps, with its wings spread, hovering aloft in the air. A moment later, this reading seemed far-fetched to him. The bird vanished, and in its stead were only two abstract shapes, linked by the tiny bridge Stillman had formed by walking west on 83rd Street. Quinn paused for a moment to consider what he was doing. Was he scribbling nonsense? (Auster 105–108)

Transgressions across levels in this text also seem to stage the process of geographical mapping. “Re-implacement” as a process of putting on display the representation of representation is an alternative, geographical way of considering the relationship between the environment and the text that is co-represented alongside the complexities of multiplying levels of reality, a trope of postmodernist novels. In City of Glass as a whole, the metafictional loops are usually drawn between author, text, and fictional characters, but we can think about how the geography and descriptions of the environment also short-circuit the conventions of representation.

Here the represented place – New York – undergoes an essentially transgressive mutation. This passage is an embedded instance of aerial description, where the protagonist, Quinn, is experiencing an aerial view as he maps his day of following another man, Stillman. He later shows anxiety about this choice to draw this map, as it was not supposed to be part of his job to develop a theory of Stillman’s movements – to describe them, in Relph’s integrative, geographical sense. Quinn begins drawing these maps in his notebook (also represented pictographically in the novel) alongside notes about Stillman’s behavior. This turn towards mapping and particularly describing Stillman’s mundane, daily behavior through the geographical survey of an aerial view converts Quinn’s mounting distrust of coherent and predictable human behavior into trust in the form of the environment. His interpretation of this map-description wavers as he wonders if the shapes are random and so only seem coherent because of the gridded form of Manhattan’s streets and sidewalks.

Whether or not the randomness is attributable to Stillman’s behavior or the constraints of the gridded streets is impossible to untangle, a chiasmus as meaningful as the fictional protagonist Quinn taking a call and assuming the identity of “Paul Auster” earlier in the novel. The revelation (or delusion) that Stillman is writing/walking out the letters to spell “THE TOWER OF BABEL” begins Quinn’s decline into total paranoia and doubt. While this seemingly spontaneous mapping, “scribbling nonsense,” is an overt spoof of detective genre tropes where apparently rational deduction guides narrative progression, from this perspective, New York’s urban geography bridges the resultant unfolding of the story logic. The mapped view-from-above is presented as an overtly imaginary reformulation of the progression of the story of Quinn following Stillman in the previous chapters.

Here we have a direct example of Levine’s thesis that “The form that best captures the experience of colliding forms is narrative. [...] What narrative form affords is a careful attention to the ways in which forms come together, and what happens when and after they meet” (19). This instance from City of Glass could be interpreted, following Levine, as a clash between the narrative form of the detective novel and the social form of urban anonymity. But it is also a clash resulting from re-implacing the urban landscape by mapping it in relation to the text itself. From this perspective, narratological models of discourse space built on cognitive science, psycholinguistics, rhetoric, or semantics all actually implicitly deny this third term – environment – by subordinating description to experience or communication of narrative discourse. This issue is a familiar one in the history of narratology, as increasingly reflexive and complex forms of narration have demanded multiplications of these models to account, for example, for how metalepsis functions.

4 Conclusion – Form and environment

Levine criticizes literary theory for taking too literally the spatial metaphor of “closure” as definitive of narrative form. Similarly, we can ask why representations of the environment have not been assessed through a more precise formal lens. The above arguments about literary form can be extended to environmental forms, or landscape. Andrew Thacker (2017) summarizes potential new goals for literary study that foregrounds environment not just thematically, but formally and methodologically: “We should reconnect the representational spaces in literary texts not only to the material spaces they depict but also reverse the movement and understand how social spaces dialogically help fashion the literary forms of texts” (34).

All three of my examples present possibilities for reversing our familiar thinking about the “directionality” of form and extending it further from description to the landscape to which it is related. In Cather, determinate human perspective-taking cannot take place on the Divide, a space that is marked by essentially indeterminate features; in Bowles, the protagonist’s own attempts at narrativization are denied by their irrelevance to the heights in which he finds himself; and in Auster, the narrative itself changes course when it is mapped into the urban geography. This is not just a merely clever theoretical maneuver toward narrative in space , but an attempt to bridge closer toward a methodology currently disparate from narratology’s treatment of space. Casey has worked for this in philosophy, and his claim about landscape presents an interesting opening for further theorization of description and environment by narratologists: “The truth is that representation is not a contingent matter, something merely secondary; it is integral to the perception of landscape itself – indeed, part of its being and essential to its manifestation ” (2002: xv; emphasis in original). Dealing with overtly imaginary manifestations in fiction allows the critic to disentangle what is the apparently integral tie between perception and landscape and to think about the role that description and imagery plays in the form of the environment.

The difference in these two intentional stances toward the environment (perceiving consciousness and imagining consciousness), of course, is not just apparent in the reading experience, though this is where it is most evident because of literary narrative’s existence as the nodal point of colliding forms (as noted by Levine above). Bachelard clarifies the primacy of descriptive images in all types of reverie: “There exists a reverie of the lively look, a reverie which is animated in a pride of seeing, of seeing clearly, of seeing well, of seeing far, and this pride of vision is perhaps more accessible to the poet than to the painter: the painter must paint this super-elevated vision; the poet has only to proclaim it” ( Bachelard 1971: 183). The point between relying on determinate signs of “super-elevated vision” and the unique ability for literary images to indirectly “proclaim” it is the crux that a geographical narratology will have to define to productively engage with geography. The present essay has proposed that one way to do this is to foreground description in space rather than either narrative in space or space in narrative.

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space description essay

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Space Order in Descriptive Text (Sample Questions and Answers)

space description essay

Definition of Spatial Order in Descriptive Essay – Description essay is a genre of essay that gives an idea of something, objects, people, etc. If you want to be able to write a good description essay, then there are numerous things you should pay attention to, and one of them is Spatial Order.

What is the Spatial Order? And how do you use it in the descriptive essay? Without any further, here’s the complete explanation of spatial order in descriptive essay.

Table of Contents

Definition of Spatial Order in Descriptive Essay

Imagine if you were standing at the door of your class. How would you describe your classroom to someone who has never seen it? Here are some possibilities:

  • You might start describing your classroom starting from the left side of the classroom door and explaining further clockwise to the right and ending at the class door again.
  • You might start describing at the front of the class first, starting from describing the blackboard, the teacher’s desk, and the area around the teacher’s desk. Then you will describe the student desk and chair in the middle of the room, then finally you will describe the wall / window on the back or side of the room.

The two examples above are Spatial Order. Below are kinds of spatial orders or signal words that you can use to write a good descriptive essay:

  • Top to bottom
  • Bottom to top
  • Far to near
  • Near to far
  • Right to left
  • Left to right
  • Outside to inside
  • Inside to outside

Topic, Controlling Idea, and Concluding Sentence in Descriptive Essay

The sentence topic usually describes the name of a person, place, or object. While controlling idea usually provides general information, such as messy , interesting , beautiful , busy , crowded , noisy , and so on.

Take a look at these sentences below :

That was an example about topic and controlling idea , whereas the concluding sentence contains an idea that is repeated in the main sentence.

For example:

  • To sum up, everyone doubts the old house in this village will survive one more winter.
  • The little children and their teacher were very relieved when they got out of the cave.

Sample Question About Spatial Order

Read the following description of a person. Then answer the questions about the organization of the paragraph that follow.

My Tall Nephew

My nephew is extremely tall-six feet, six inches tall, to be exact. He has short, light brown, and curly hair, and blue eyes. He has straight nose, and his mouth curls into a smile easily. He usually wears casual clothes, the same as typical of young people everywhere: a T-shirt and jeans. You can read the name of his school in red and blue letters on the front of his shirt. You notice that his jeans are a little too short as your eyes move down his long legs. Perhaps he can’t buy pants to fit his long legs and narrow waist, or perhaps he doesn’t care much about clothes. On his feet, he wears sneakers. His sneakers that were used to be white when they were new, now are gray with age. My nephew is not a casual person despite his casual clothes. He stands tall and straight, and you think to yourself, “This is a strong and confident young man.”

1. Analyze the topic sentence. Underline the topic with one line and the controlling idea with double line.

2. What is the nephew’s most noticeable physical feature?

__________________________________________________________________

3. Which sentence is the concluding sentence?

4. What word in the topic sentence is repeated in the concluding sentence?

5. What kind of spatial order does the writer of this paragraph use?

  • My nephew is extremely tall-six feet, six inches tall, to be exact.
  • His tall figure.
  • The concluding sentence is: He stands tall and straight, and you think to yourself, “This is a strong and confident young man.”
  • The word  tall is repeated in both topic and concluding sentence.
  • The writer use  top to bottom  as the spatial order.

That was our explanation about spatial order in descriptive essay, along with sample questions and answers. We hope this article is helpful and thanks for reading!

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25+ Space Writing Prompts

Looking for some cool space writing prompts to inspire you? Space is a mysterious, and highly imaginative topic to write about. It gives you the room to explore your imagination and learn some interesting facts about the solar system and more. Whether you want to write a factual story about life on Mars, or a fictional tale of alien empires, these 25 space-themed writing prompts are here to inspire!

Love Outerspace? Check out this cool planet name generator and our special sci-fi book title generator . And for more space-themed prompts, see this post on over 110 sci-fi writing prompts .

From creative writing space-themed ideas to thought-provoking solar system writing prompts for all ages:

  • You just discovered a new planet. Imagine you are an astronaut, and you just crash-landed on a secret planet in the solar system. Describe this planet in great detail. Think about the climate, atmosphere, appearance, the sky and so on.
  • Write a series of journal entries about travelling to Mars. You and your family have been selected to live on Mars for a few months, as a trial run for the government. Write a series of journal entries as you travel to Mars in a rocket. Think about the food you’re eating. How do you keep yourself entertained in the spaceship? And even how you go to the bathroom, or have a shower in a rocket. 
  • Write a short story about discovering a broken spaceship. You wake up in the morning to find pieces of a broken spaceship scattered across your backyard. What happens next in this story?
  • Describe a new alien race. Start by drawing a picture of this new alien race that could live somewhere out there in the galaxy. Then describe this alien in great detail. And don’t forget to give this new alien race a name. 
  • You are the captain of a space pirate ship. You travel the galaxy, causing chaos wherever you go. Write about your latest adventure in space. 
  • Write a futuristic detective story set in space. In the year 3,006, you are a detective trying to solve the case of the missing space children from years ago.
  • Interview an astronaut about his recent trip to the moon. Don’t worry, it doesn’t need to be a real interview, just an imaginary one! Think about the questions you would ask this astronaut, and how they would reply. Try to think of at least 10 questions and answers for this imaginary interview. 
  • Write a fairytale about an astronaut who falls in love with an alien princess. Start your fairytale with the line, “Once upon a time…”. Read our guide on how to write fairy tales for further help.
  • Write the origin story of how Uranus was discovered. On 13th March 1781, Sir William Herschel first discovered Uranus using his trusty telescope. Turn this discovery into an exciting story of how a hard-working astronomer discovered the planet, known as the “ice-giant”.
  • It’s the year 3,021 and humans have built cities all over the solar system. In just a few hours you can travel to any planet in the solar system and beyond. Write a short story about being the ruler of any planet of your choice, set in the future. 
  • Write a heart-warming story about a boy who discovers a Meteorite. The discovery of this meteorite changes his life completely. But how exactly?
  • Write a funny story about a group of space chimps. A group of space chimps set out to break the record for staying in space the longest. What happens next?
  • Can humans live on Mars? The government has given you the task of seeing if humans can live on Mars. You assemble a team of scientists and astronauts to test this theory. Continue this story.
  • For years you have been collecting the remains of meteorites on Earth. Your entire shed is filled with meteorites collected from various places on Earth. One day, a strange-looking scientist from NASA knocks at your door, asking to hand over the entire collection. Continue this story.
  • Write a short story titled, “Paranoid About The Stars.”. One idea for this story could be about a boy who uses his telescope every single night. He believes the stars are trying to tell him something. Is this true or is he just being paranoid?
  • Write eight haiku poems about the eight major planets in the solar system. These planets include Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.
  • Humans need to leave Earth, as it slowly crumbles away. But only a select few can leave Earth to live on the new habitable planet. Who qualifies as part of this selection? Are there any challenges they have to win? Continue this story.
  • NASA has selected a group of civilians to live on Mars. You have been given a checklist of basic things to do on Mars, along with a training manual. Continue this story. Think about how you will live on Mars, and what things you will need to do in order to survive.
  • A trip to the moon goes terribly wrong. Continue this story. Think about all the things that could go wrong while travelling to the moon.
  • Create a travel brochure for Mars. Remember to highlight all the key tourist attractions, places to stay and eat while on Mars.
  • A group of space aliens have been travelling the galaxy for years. They have been documenting life on each planet they have visited. And now they have finally landed on Earth. Write a quick guide to life on Earth. Remember to cover the basic things, such as sleeping, eating, going to school and travelling.
  • Would you rather rule life on Uranus (The coldest planet) or Venus (The hottest planet)? Explain your choice. 
  • You crash land on a strange planet and are captured by aliens. For years you work as a slave for these aliens, until one day…Continue this story.
  • You are the chairman of the Planet Peace Committee. The role of the committee is to ensure peace and cooperation between all the planets in the solar system. Make a list of rules you would set to ensure peace between planets.
  • After Earth is destroyed, humans travel to live on a new planet. You are the lead pilot on a spaceship that is carrying 10,000 human passengers across space. Suddenly a fight breaks out in the ship setting you off course. Continue this story.
  • It’s been 16 years since you left Earth. Finally, as a grown-up, you return to Earth to discover…Continue this story.

Need more inspiration for your outer space story? See our post on science writing prompts .

Check out this cool space-themed video prompt (Subscribe to our YouTube channel for more cool prompts like this one):

Did you find this list of space writing prompts useful? Let us know in the comment below!

space writing prompts

Marty the wizard is the master of Imagine Forest. When he's not reading a ton of books or writing some of his own tales, he loves to be surrounded by the magical creatures that live in Imagine Forest. While living in his tree house he has devoted his time to helping children around the world with their writing skills and creativity.

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What Is Spatial Order And How To Use It In Essay?

Jared Houdi

Table of Contents

space description essay

When it comes to effective writing, high school and college students typically think about aspects like good story content, convincing evidence, appropriate word choice, correct grammar, etc.

But the clear and logical organization is an essential part of effective writing, too.

There are several patterns of logical organization that can be used in writing academic essays and term papers :

  • Chronological order.
  • Compare-contrast pattern.
  • Order of importance.
  • spatial order.
  • Problem-solution method.
  • Cause-effect pattern.
  • Advantages-disadvantages pattern.
  • Topical pattern.

There are no strict rules which pattern should be used for an effective conveying of ideas. Think carefully of patterns that make sense, and would help your readers get a better understanding of the information.

Besides, paper organization principles have many variations, and very often, different methods are combined.

Let’s talk of the most commonly used patterns: the spatial order meaning and its function.

Spatial order as a principle of organization

Writing an impressive high school or college academic essay depends on the logical organization of the content. Pro essay writing websites recommend organizing your thoughts is as important as the choice of relevant facts to prove your point of view.

For example, in a description of a scene or setting, a specific logical order helps the audience visualize the scene.

… So, what is spatial order?

It is a type of logical organization pattern that is used in descriptive writing. Its main feature is that things are described as they appear when observed.

This approach makes it easier for writers to paint a vivid picture for readers.

Let’s discuss this concept in detail and begin with spatial order definition.

Spatial order definition

…How would we define spatial order?

It’s a principle of descriptive writing when items are arranged in the order of their physical location or correlation.

This structural order in descriptive paragraphs determines the readers’ perspective and how details are perceived. Focus is on location; time is ignored.

How may this organizational arrangement be used?

  • In fiction , it is used for descriptions of objects and places; in nonfiction – for describing physical or social phenomena.
  • Technical writers can use this method for explaining how a mechanism works or how parts of a machine fit together.
  • Food critics apply this pattern when they review a new restaurant for a description of the dining area.
  • Architects utilize this order to describe designs of buildings.

What is the spatial order?

…What does spatial order mean?

If talking about descriptions, this method means that the writer explains or describes objects as they are arranged in space. It creates a picture for readers, and the audience’s perspective is the viewpoint from which the writer describes what’s around.

First, the writer has to choose a specific starting point and then create an orderly logical progression by providing readers with directional signals they should follow from place to place.

If the description is complicated, you can use a simple chart or diagram to help your readers understand it quickly.

Spatial writing: the details

A spatial organization of information in paragraphs is also called descriptive writing. It is often used when a narrator wants to describe how something looks. For example, you can use this approach in descriptive essays about a person when you describe someone’s appearance, starting from the feet and moving up to the head.

Take a look at spatial order example which describes various layers of a volcano.

A volcano is a beautiful and dangerous natural phenomenon. The magma chamber, an extremely hot part which people rarely see, is under the Earth surface beneath the bed’s rock. The conduit is running from the volcano’s magma chamber to the crater which is at the top of the volcano.

Logical order of location in space can be used in some narrations, classifications, comparisons, and other forms of expository writings.

Have a look at this description paragraph.

According to annual weather patterns, there are 6 major climate regions. In the extreme northern latitudes, the climate is polar without any plant life. Next to it, there is cold tundra in the extremes of the north of Asia and North America where we can find shrubs and grasses. In the adjacent temperate regions, there are forests with a rich diversity of plants.

Don’t worry if you still have some trouble with a proper understanding of what the spatial order is. You can always count on us and order essay from experienced writers.

What are spatial order signal words?

Here is a short list of spatial order signal words which might indicate that a speaker or a writer is following a spatial organization pattern.

Many of these words are prepositions that are placed at the beginning of sentences to connect them with the ideas expressed in the preceding sentences.

  • On the left hand
  • On the right hand
  • Attached to
  • At the top of
  • To the side of
  • In front of

These words are used to build a vivid picture that the audience can grasp.

Spatial organization in writing: how to..?

space description essay

The spatial pattern works well when writers want to create mental pictures of something that has various parts distinguished by physical location. You may start by describing a scene, object, or a location as a whole and then focus on specific details in the setting.

This type of organization is the best for describing a setting and scene, but writers can also utilize it for giving directions or instructions.

If you wish to apply this method of organization in your description, you need to make a series of decisions.

  • First of all, decide what scene you want to describe first. You should take the perspective of your readers and determine what details are the most important and relevant for them.
  • Then you should think about the aspects of the scene you want to include in your description and describe all the elements in a logical order, choosing a starting point. When utilizing this pattern in essays describing items, writers can start from the left and move gradually to the right or go from top to bottom, from inside to outside or from west to east.
  • It’s essential to use transition words and phrases to show logical relationships between the details.

Read this description of a room where all the details are described in the order of their location in space.

When you walk in the door of my bedroom, the first thing you notice is a large bed on the wall. In front of my bed, there is a grey carpet on the floor. Above the bed, there is a beautiful picture and an old clock. As you turn to the left, you will see a wardrobe and a big mirror.

This approach to the logical organization has some disadvantages as well. When a writer describes elements in such a way, all of them get equal weight.

But if you want to emphasize one specific aspect of a scene and draw particular attention to something, a spatial pattern makes it hard to achieve that goal so you’d better choose another organization method.

Without a clear organizational pattern, your readers could become confused.

A solid organizational pattern helps your audience see connections and allows them to stay focused. Spatial organization in writing a descriptive essay allows readers visualize something as the writer wants them to see it, by evoking a scene using five senses (sight, taste, smell, touch, and sound).

But you shouldn’t use spatial writing in long text because they may sound monotonous and your readers will be bored. Think about other methods of organizing your ideas.

Sometimes, it is better to use a chronological pattern or even just stream-of-consciousness method to communicate a specific idea in a clear, intelligible manner.

Can’t get to write another essay? Buy argumentative essay organized in spatial order right now with a discount!

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Home — Essay Samples — Science — Space Exploration — The Future of Space Exploration

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The Future of Space Exploration

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Published: Jan 30, 2024

Words: 388 | Page: 1 | 2 min read

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Introduction, scientific discoveries, technological advancements, sustainable colonization, challenges and limitations.

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Saturday, november 14, 2009, descriptive writing: the universe.

space description essay

19 comments:

space description essay

The last paragraph was good if We were check the Essay on its mood and descriptions. Is this the essay you had in mind when you showed Us the presentation of the Universe?

space description essay

Wow, sir. Is this the mood you expected in our essays?

space description essay

That's pro-ness. I wrote something similar, but not as powerful as this, in the assessment.

space description essay

No Tannya, I don't expect students to write like this. But I do expect students to make the effort to. This essay is just to show the possibilities of the language and why it's important to follow my instructions on using adjectives, metaphors, similes, and why we should avoid cliches.

space description essay

Why does my piece suddenly feel like disconcerting, insignificant ramble? :P

space description essay

Haha! Thats mine! No, it isnt but I wish though...! Thats one heck of a piece, and if this was written by a student, I would love to get their name so that in the future I can pick up one of their world famous books.

space description essay

woah.. we need built in thesaurus's to match the level of this essay sir! ahaha beautiful!

space description essay

Oh dear god. Sir, do you think, if any of us could write an essay like that, we'd still be at school?? We'd be making millions off an extract like that! lol! That was a brilliant example. I could actually feel claustrophobic atmosphere towards the last paragraph! PRO!

space description essay

Wow Sir, you make me feel even like im more and more talentless day by day :P Well at least now i know what it is that you are looking for. My mind was really boggled at the question, space tourist but not a story? Great essay. Great might be a wee bit of an understatement though.

space description essay

Ohmygod. Right now the prospect of getting a C or possibly a D is running through my mind. Haha I read Duwane's comment and I'm like 'say what! :| ' Sigh; I hope I'm capable of writing like that someday.

Wow, just wow. That is an awesome piece of work Sir. My hat off to you :P. The description was so good, I could see the images in my mind. Well, my essay can go to the bin!!

^ No no, Sonal! The intention of putting up this essay was not to make students feel bad or think less of themselves. It would make no sense to compare a teacher's work with a student's. My only aim was to show what can be done if we follow instuctions, i.e. use metaphors, similes, adjectives, create mood and setting, use groups of three, alliteration and imagery... My aim was not to make you feel disheartened but to drive you to have higher expectations of yourself.

space description essay

I couldn't say this in class but the essay made me want to curl up in some secluded corner of the world wearing nothing but a thin, cotton veil and wallow in my sheer misery depression and shame ;; That descriptive enough for you? |D;;

space description essay

shh this is a secret, that's actually my essay :D ahaha i WISH!! it's like you eat dictionaries for breakfast sir :O *shreds own essay* yea, nothing compared to yours :P

space description essay

LOL, Ishita that's what i wonder everyday- if Mr. Roberts has eaten dictionaries. But it was really fantastic, especially the first paragraph.

Mr Roberts, I understood exactly what you meant Sir. I just said that my essay should go to the bin ,was because I knew I could have or should have done better. (Guess i should have mentioned that). :D hahaha, and I got to agree, it does seems like you've eaten some dictionaries!!! :D

I feel so......obsolete

space description essay

WOOOOOWWWWW!!!!!!!

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25 of the Best Words to Describe the Outer Space

By: Author Hiuyan Lam

Posted on Last updated: October 20, 2023

Categories Vocabulary Boosters

25 of the Best Words to Describe the Outer Space

If you want to be a good or even great storyteller, you need to equip yourself with words to describe everything imaginable to paint vivid pictures for your readers.

In this post, we’re going to take a look at some words to describe space. Space can be a tricky thing to describe since most humans have never been there, and we can only base it on what we’ve seen in movies or read in books.

The good thing about being a writer is that even if you can’t draw on your memory to describe something such as outer space, you can use your imagination. If you want to create different settings for your readers in your description of what outer space feels like, you need to tap deep into your creativity.

Here are 25 of our favorite words to describe space and how you can use them to improve your writing:

10 words to describe space in a mystical way

  Outer space isn’t just about what you can see. Sure, there are planets, stars and moons, but what about the way that it makes you feel, or in other words, the vibe?   When writing, it’s important to set that tone for your readers to make your storytelling more effective. Here are 10 words to describe space in a mystical sense:  

crew two astronauts space suits standing

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8 words to describe space when it is vast and infinite

  Space is really big. It is so vast that it can be hard to describe to your readers just how huge it really is.   Here are some words to describe space based on its size:  

beautiful space view earth cloud formation

7 words to describe the starry Milky Way

  Now, let’s talk about words to describe space that we live in, meaning the Milky Way galaxy:  

orion nebula m42 galaxyopen clusterglobular cluster

20+ of the Best Words to Describe Night in a Story

teamwork support group people standing together

  Finding the right words to describe space can improve your writing significantly and help you connect with your readers. You can even come up with other words to describe space once you start to think outside of the box.  

Descriptive Essay

Descriptive Essay About A Place

Caleb S.

Writing a Descriptive Essay About A Place - Guide With Examples

Descriptive Essay About A Place

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Are you writing an essay about a place and need to know where to start?

The beauty of the world lies in its diversity, and every place has something unique to offer. A descriptive essay can bring these places alive for readers. But the question is, how do you write one?

Don't worry! We've got the right answer for you!

With a few examples and some tips on crafting your own essay, you can write it easily.

So read on to find good samples and tips to follow!

Arrow Down

  • 1. Understanding Descriptive Essays
  • 2. Examples of Descriptive Essay About Any Place
  • 3. Tips for Writing an Excellent Descriptive Essay About A Place

Understanding Descriptive Essays

A descriptive essay is a type of writing that aims to describe and portray an object, person, or place. The essay typically includes sensory details to help the reader imagine its contents more vividly. Descriptive essays can be written about a person , place, or other themes like nature , autumn , food , or even yourself .

A descriptive essay about a place should provide enough details for the reader to build a mental image of it. To do this, you need to include vivid descriptions and relevant information that could paint a picture in their minds.

Let's read some examples to see what a good descriptive essay looks like.

Examples of Descriptive Essay About Any Place

Here are some descriptive writing about a place examples:

Example of a Descriptive Essay About a Place

Descriptive Essay About a Place You Visited

Descriptive Essay About a Place Called Home

Descriptive Essay About a Place You Loved as a Child

Descriptive Essay About a Place of Interest I Visited

Descriptive Essay About a Favorite Place

Do you need more sample essays? Check out more descriptive essay examples t o get inspired.

Tips for Writing an Excellent Descriptive Essay About A Place

Now that you've read some examples of descriptive essays about places, it's time to learn how to write one yourself. Here are some tips on writing a great essay:

Choose The Right Topic

The topic of your essay should be something that you have a strong connection to or feeling about. It could be a place you've visited recently or a place from your childhood. Moreover, make sure that it's something that you can write about in enough detail to make your essay interesting.

Check out this blog with 100+ descriptive essay topics to get your creative juices flowing.

Gather Information

Gather as much information as possible about the topic of your essay. This will help you craft vivid descriptions and portray an accurate picture for your readers. Gather your observations, research online, and talk to people who have visited the place you're writing about.

Make sure to research the topic thoroughly so you can provide accurate and detailed descriptions. Read up as much as you can about the history of the place, and any interesting facts or stories about it.

Structure Your Essay

Outline your descriptive essay before beginning to write so all points flow logically from one to another throughout the entire piece.

Make sure to include a strong introduction and conclusion, as well as several body paragraphs that help support your main points.

Include Sensory Details

Use sensory language by including details such as sights, smells, tastes, sounds, etc. This helps to engage readers and transport them into the setting of your essay.

When writing a descriptive essay, make sure to include vivid descriptions that involve all five senses. This will help create a more engaging and immersive experience for your readers.

Use Vivid Language

Make sure to use strong and powerful words when describing the place you're writing about. Use metaphors and similes to bring your descriptions to life and make them more interesting for readers.

Proofread Your Essay

Proofreading is an important step in any writing process, especially when it comes to descriptive essays. Make sure to check for any typos or spelling errors that may have slipped through in your writing.

You also need to make sure that the flow of your essay is logical and coherent. Check if you've used a consistent point of view throughout, and make sure that all ideas are well-supported with evidence. 

Follow these tips and examples, and you'll be well on your way to writing a great descriptive essay.

Don't stress if you still want a professional writer to do it for you. We've got the best solution for you.

MyPerfectWords.com offers the best custom essay writing service to help you write a great descriptive essay. Our experienced writers are here to provide high-quality and error-free work to help you get the grade you deserve. With our essay writing service, you are guaranteed a 100% original essay.

Get in touch with us to hire our descriptive essay writing service now.

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  • Solar Eclipse 2024

What the World Has Learned From Past Eclipses

C louds scudded over the small volcanic island of Principe, off the western coast of Africa, on the afternoon of May 29, 1919. Arthur Eddington, director of the Cambridge Observatory in the U.K., waited for the Sun to emerge. The remains of a morning thunderstorm could ruin everything.

The island was about to experience the rare and overwhelming sight of a total solar eclipse. For six minutes, the longest eclipse since 1416, the Moon would completely block the face of the Sun, pulling a curtain of darkness over a thin stripe of Earth. Eddington traveled into the eclipse path to try and prove one of the most consequential ideas of his age: Albert Einstein’s new theory of general relativity.

Eddington, a physicist, was one of the few people at the time who understood the theory, which Einstein proposed in 1915. But many other scientists were stymied by the bizarre idea that gravity is not a mutual attraction, but a warping of spacetime. Light itself would be subject to this warping, too. So an eclipse would be the best way to prove whether the theory was true, because with the Sun’s light blocked by the Moon, astronomers would be able to see whether the Sun’s gravity bent the light of distant stars behind it.

Two teams of astronomers boarded ships steaming from Liverpool, England, in March 1919 to watch the eclipse and take the measure of the stars. Eddington and his team went to Principe, and another team led by Frank Dyson of the Greenwich Observatory went to Sobral, Brazil.

Totality, the complete obscuration of the Sun, would be at 2:13 local time in Principe. Moments before the Moon slid in front of the Sun, the clouds finally began breaking up. For a moment, it was totally clear. Eddington and his group hastily captured images of a star cluster found near the Sun that day, called the Hyades, found in the constellation of Taurus. The astronomers were using the best astronomical technology of the time, photographic plates, which are large exposures taken on glass instead of film. Stars appeared on seven of the plates, and solar “prominences,” filaments of gas streaming from the Sun, appeared on others.

Eddington wanted to stay in Principe to measure the Hyades when there was no eclipse, but a ship workers’ strike made him leave early. Later, Eddington and Dyson both compared the glass plates taken during the eclipse to other glass plates captured of the Hyades in a different part of the sky, when there was no eclipse. On the images from Eddington’s and Dyson’s expeditions, the stars were not aligned. The 40-year-old Einstein was right.

“Lights All Askew In the Heavens,” the New York Times proclaimed when the scientific papers were published. The eclipse was the key to the discovery—as so many solar eclipses before and since have illuminated new findings about our universe.

Telescope used to observe a total solar eclipse, Sobral, Brazil, 1919.

To understand why Eddington and Dyson traveled such distances to watch the eclipse, we need to talk about gravity.

Since at least the days of Isaac Newton, who wrote in 1687, scientists thought gravity was a simple force of mutual attraction. Newton proposed that every object in the universe attracts every other object in the universe, and that the strength of this attraction is related to the size of the objects and the distances among them. This is mostly true, actually, but it’s a little more nuanced than that.

On much larger scales, like among black holes or galaxy clusters, Newtonian gravity falls short. It also can’t accurately account for the movement of large objects that are close together, such as how the orbit of Mercury is affected by its proximity the Sun.

Albert Einstein’s most consequential breakthrough solved these problems. General relativity holds that gravity is not really an invisible force of mutual attraction, but a distortion. Rather than some kind of mutual tug-of-war, large objects like the Sun and other stars respond relative to each other because the space they are in has been altered. Their mass is so great that they bend the fabric of space and time around themselves.

Read More: 10 Surprising Facts About the 2024 Solar Eclipse

This was a weird concept, and many scientists thought Einstein’s ideas and equations were ridiculous. But others thought it sounded reasonable. Einstein and others knew that if the theory was correct, and the fabric of reality is bending around large objects, then light itself would have to follow that bend. The light of a star in the great distance, for instance, would seem to curve around a large object in front of it, nearer to us—like our Sun. But normally, it’s impossible to study stars behind the Sun to measure this effect. Enter an eclipse.

Einstein’s theory gives an equation for how much the Sun’s gravity would displace the images of background stars. Newton’s theory predicts only half that amount of displacement.

Eddington and Dyson measured the Hyades cluster because it contains many stars; the more stars to distort, the better the comparison. Both teams of scientists encountered strange political and natural obstacles in making the discovery, which are chronicled beautifully in the book No Shadow of a Doubt: The 1919 Eclipse That Confirmed Einstein's Theory of Relativity , by the physicist Daniel Kennefick. But the confirmation of Einstein’s ideas was worth it. Eddington said as much in a letter to his mother: “The one good plate that I measured gave a result agreeing with Einstein,” he wrote , “and I think I have got a little confirmation from a second plate.”

The Eddington-Dyson experiments were hardly the first time scientists used eclipses to make profound new discoveries. The idea dates to the beginnings of human civilization.

Careful records of lunar and solar eclipses are one of the greatest legacies of ancient Babylon. Astronomers—or astrologers, really, but the goal was the same—were able to predict both lunar and solar eclipses with impressive accuracy. They worked out what we now call the Saros Cycle, a repeating period of 18 years, 11 days, and 8 hours in which eclipses appear to repeat. One Saros cycle is equal to 223 synodic months, which is the time it takes the Moon to return to the same phase as seen from Earth. They also figured out, though may not have understood it completely, the geometry that enables eclipses to happen.

The path we trace around the Sun is called the ecliptic. Our planet’s axis is tilted with respect to the ecliptic plane, which is why we have seasons, and why the other celestial bodies seem to cross the same general path in our sky.

As the Moon goes around Earth, it, too, crosses the plane of the ecliptic twice in a year. The ascending node is where the Moon moves into the northern ecliptic. The descending node is where the Moon enters the southern ecliptic. When the Moon crosses a node, a total solar eclipse can happen. Ancient astronomers were aware of these points in the sky, and by the apex of Babylonian civilization, they were very good at predicting when eclipses would occur.

Two and a half millennia later, in 2016, astronomers used these same ancient records to measure the change in the rate at which Earth’s rotation is slowing—which is to say, the amount by which are days are lengthening, over thousands of years.

By the middle of the 19 th century, scientific discoveries came at a frenetic pace, and eclipses powered many of them. In October 1868, two astronomers, Pierre Jules César Janssen and Joseph Norman Lockyer, separately measured the colors of sunlight during a total eclipse. Each found evidence of an unknown element, indicating a new discovery: Helium, named for the Greek god of the Sun. In another eclipse in 1869, astronomers found convincing evidence of another new element, which they nicknamed coronium—before learning a few decades later that it was not a new element, but highly ionized iron, indicating that the Sun’s atmosphere is exceptionally, bizarrely hot. This oddity led to the prediction, in the 1950s, of a continual outflow that we now call the solar wind.

And during solar eclipses between 1878 and 1908, astronomers searched in vain for a proposed extra planet within the orbit of Mercury. Provisionally named Vulcan, this planet was thought to exist because Newtonian gravity could not fully describe Mercury’s strange orbit. The matter of the innermost planet’s path was settled, finally, in 1915, when Einstein used general relativity equations to explain it.

Many eclipse expeditions were intended to learn something new, or to prove an idea right—or wrong. But many of these discoveries have major practical effects on us. Understanding the Sun, and why its atmosphere gets so hot, can help us predict solar outbursts that could disrupt the power grid and communications satellites. Understanding gravity, at all scales, allows us to know and to navigate the cosmos.

GPS satellites, for instance, provide accurate measurements down to inches on Earth. Relativity equations account for the effects of the Earth’s gravity and the distances between the satellites and their receivers on the ground. Special relativity holds that the clocks on satellites, which experience weaker gravity, seem to run slower than clocks under the stronger force of gravity on Earth. From the point of view of the satellite, Earth clocks seem to run faster. We can use different satellites in different positions, and different ground stations, to accurately triangulate our positions on Earth down to inches. Without those calculations, GPS satellites would be far less precise.

This year, scientists fanned out across North America and in the skies above it will continue the legacy of eclipse science. Scientists from NASA and several universities and other research institutions will study Earth’s atmosphere; the Sun’s atmosphere; the Sun’s magnetic fields; and the Sun’s atmospheric outbursts, called coronal mass ejections.

When you look up at the Sun and Moon on the eclipse , the Moon’s day — or just observe its shadow darkening the ground beneath the clouds, which seems more likely — think about all the discoveries still yet waiting to happen, just behind the shadow of the Moon.

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Descriptive Essay Writing

Descriptive Essay Examples

Barbara P

Amazing Descriptive Essay Examples for Your Help

Published on: Jun 21, 2023

Last updated on: Mar 1, 2024

Descriptive Essay Examples

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Descriptive Essay: Definition, Tips & Examples

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Descriptive essays are very commonly assigned essays. This type of essay enhances students' writing skills and allows them to think critically. 

A descriptive essay is often referred to as the parent essay type. Other essays like argumentative essays, narrative essays, and expository essays fall into descriptive essays. Also, this essay helps the student enhance their ability to imagine the whole scene in mind by appealing senses.

It is assigned to high school students and all other students at different academic levels. Students make use of the human senses like touch, smell, etc., to make the descriptive essay more engaging for the readers. 

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Examples make it easy for readers to understand things in a better way. Also, in a descriptive essay, different types of descriptions can be discussed. 

Here are some amazing examples of a descriptive essay to make the concept easier for you. 

Descriptive Essay Example 5 Paragraph

5 paragraphs essay writing format is the most common method of composing an essay. This format has 5 paragraphs in total. The sequence of the paragraphs is as follows;

  • Introduction
  • Body Paragraph 1
  • Body Paragraph 2 
  • Body Paragraph 3
  • Conclusion 

Following is an example of a descriptive essay written using the famous 5 paragraph method. 

5 Paragraph Descriptive Essay

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Descriptive Essay Example About A Person

Descriptive essays are the best option when it comes to describing and writing about a person.  A descriptive essay is written using the five human senses. It helps in creating a vivid image in the reader’s mind and understanding what the writer is trying to convey. 

Here is one of the best descriptive essay examples about a person. Read it thoroughly and try to understand how a good descriptive essay is written on someone’s personality.

Descriptive Essay Example About a Person

Descriptive Essay Example About A Place

If you have visited a good holiday spot or any other place and want to let your friends know about it. A descriptive essay can help you explain every detail and moment you had at that place. 

Here is one of the good descriptive essay examples about a place. Use it as a sample and learn how you can write such an essay. 

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Descriptive Essay Example for Grade 6

Descriptive essays are frequently assigned to school students. This type of essay helps the students enhance their writing skills and helps them see things in a more analytical way.

If you are a 6 grader and looking for a good descriptive essay example, you are in the right place.  

Descriptive Essay Example for Grade 7

Here is one of the best descriptive essay examples for grade 7. 

Descriptive Essay Example for Grade 8

If you are looking for some amazing descriptive essay examples for grade 8, you have already found one. Look at the given example and see what a well-written descriptive essay looks like. 

Descriptive Essay Example for Grade 10

Essay writing is an inevitable part of a student's academic life . No matter your grade, you will get to write some sort of essay at least once. 

Here is an example of a descriptive essay writing for grade10. If you are also a student of this grade, this example might help you to complete your assignment.

Descriptive Essay Example for Grade 12

If you are a senior student and looking for some essay examples, you are exactly where you should be. 

Use the below-mentioned example and learn how to write a good essay according to the instructions given to you. 

Descriptive Essay Example College

Descriptive essays are a great way to teach students how they can become better writers. Writing a descriptive essay encourages them to see the world more analytically.

Below is an example that will help you and make your writing process easy.

College Descriptive Essay Example

Descriptive Essay Example for University

Descriptive essays are assigned to students at all academic levels. University students are also assigned descriptive essay writing assignments. As they are students of higher educational levels, they are often given a bit of difficult and more descriptive topics. 

See the example below and know what a descriptive essay at the university level looks like. 

Short Descriptive Essay Example

Every time a descriptive essay isn't written in detail. It depends on the topic of how long the essay will be.  

For instance, look at one of the short descriptive essay examples given below. See how the writer has conveyed the concept in a composed way. 

Objective Descriptive Essay Example

When writing an objective description essay, you focus on describing the object without conveying your emotions, feelings, or personal reactions. The writer uses sight, sound, or touch for readers' minds to bring life into pictures that were painted by words.

Here is an example that you can use for your help. 

Narrative and Descriptive Essay Example

A narrative descriptive essay can be a great way to share your experiences with others. It is a story that teaches a lesson you have learned. The following is an example of a perfect narrative descriptive essay to help you get started.

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How to Start a Descriptive Essay? - Example

If you don't know how to start your descriptive essay, check this example and create a perfect one. 

How to Start a Descriptive Essay - Example

Subjective Descriptive Essay Example

It is a common concept that a descriptive essay revolves around one subject. Be it a place, person, event, or any other object you can think of. 

Following is one of the subjective descriptive, easy examples. Use it as a guide to writing an effective descriptive essay yourself. 

Writing a descriptive essay is a time-consuming yet tricky task. It needs some very strong writing, analytical, and critical thinking skills. Also, this is a type of essay that a student can not avoid and bypass. 

But if you think wisely, work smart, and stay calm, you can get over it easily. Learn how to write a descriptive essay from a short guide given below. 

How to Write a Descriptive Essay?

A writer writes a descriptive essay from their knowledge and imaginative mind. In this essay, the writer describes what he has seen or experienced, or ever heard from someone. For a descriptive essay, it is important to stay focused on one point. Also, the writer should use figurative language so that the reader can imagine the situation in mind. 

The following are some very basic yet important steps that can help you write an amazing descriptive essay easily. 

  • Choose a Topic

For a descriptive essay, you must choose a vast topic to allow you to express yourself freely. Also, make sure that the topic you choose is not overdone. An overdone will not grab the attention of your intended audience. Check out our descriptive essay topics blog for a variety of intriguing topic suggestions.

  • Create a Strong Thesis Statement

A thesis statement is the essence of any academic writing. When you select the descriptive essay topic, then you create a strong thesis statement for your essay.  

A thesis statement is a sentence or two that explains the whole idea of your essay to the reader. It is stated in the introductory paragraph of the essay. The word choice for creating the thesis statement must be very expressive, composed, and meaningful. Also, use vivid language for the thesis statement.  

  • Collect the Necessary Information

Once you have created the thesis statement and are done writing your essay introduction . Now, it's time to move toward the body paragraphs. 

Collect all necessary information related to your topic. You would be adding this information to your essay to support your thesis statement. Make sure that you collect information from authentic sources. 

To enhance your essay, make use of some adjectives and adverbs. To make your descriptive essay more vivid, try to incorporate sensory details like touch, taste, sight, and smell.

  • Create a Descriptive Essay Outline

An outline is yet another necessary element of your college essay. By reading the descriptive essay outline , the reader feels a sense of logic and a guide for the essay. 

In the outline, you need to write an introduction, thesis statement, body paragraphs and end up with a formal conclusion.

Proofreading is a simple procedure in which the writer revises the written essay. This is done in order to rectify the document for any kind of spelling or grammatical mistakes. Thus, proofreading makes high-quality content and gives a professional touch to it. 

You might be uncertain about writing a good enough descriptive essay and impress your teacher. However, it is very common, so you do not need to stress out. 

Hit us up at CollegeEssay.org and get an essay written by our professional descriptive essay writers. Our essay writing service for students aims to help clients in every way possible and ease their stress. Get in touch with our customer support team, and they will take care of all your queries related to your writing. 

You can always enhance your writing skills by leveraging the power of our AI essay writing tools .

Place your order now and let all your stress go away in a blink! 

Barbara P (Literature)

Barbara is a highly educated and qualified author with a Ph.D. in public health from an Ivy League university. She has spent a significant amount of time working in the medical field, conducting a thorough study on a variety of health issues. Her work has been published in several major publications.

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space description essay

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