Many people’s concept of sublime is associated with beautiful geographic locations such as mountains and lakes. While these settings do invoke a feeling of tranquility and admiration within me, they don’t fare well against the external darkness of outer space that fills our skies.

In the Introduction to Romanticism and The Gothic, it was stated that many people were awed by concepts of nightmarish terror and unsettling events. To me, outer space invokes multiple contradicting sensations such as beauty and terror as well as knowing and unknowing. Many of the radiant lights that illuminate our night skies come from the explosions of dying stars. It’s puzzling to imagine that something so beautiful could result from an event so terrifying. Space has also fascinated mankind ever since they came into existence. Our ancestors questioned its origins and mechanics. Our ancestors invented telescopes and created the laws of physics in an effort to understand the unknown and at the same time propel humanity forward. Yet here we are in the twenty- first century with all of our technological advancements and wealth of information, Space is one of the subject that mankind knows the least about.

Edmund Burke’s A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful stated that our sublime stems from passion, terror and obscurity. Space is infinite. It is constantly expanding into who knows what. This raises the age old question of whether or not we are alone in the universe. More importantly since Space is always expanding, it means we will never fully comprehend it. Knowing this, I feel a little uneasy but become more fascinated.