Like any oth­er blis­ter­ing hot Sat­ur­day af­ter­noon, most young adults would usu­al­ly find them­selves in a mall or tan­ning them­selves at some beach, but on No­vem­ber 5th 2011, in­di­vid­u­als from 16 schools found them­selves at the Frank Stock­dale Build­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies to put their as­tro­nom­i­cal knowl­edge to the test.The as­tron­o­my club is the youth arm of Trinidad and To­ba­go As­tro­nom­i­cal So­ci­ety (TTAS). Meet­ings are held around 7pm every first Sat­ur­day of the month in the Lec­ture Room C of the Frank Stock­dale Build­ing. Once every month, some­thing new is brought to the ta­ble whether by pre­sen­ta­tions or view­ings which are all gov­erned by our hard work­ing teacher Mr. Ger­ry Bar­row.

In our whole as­tro­nom­i­cal year, the quiz is the most an­tic­i­pat­ed event. At around 5pm, par­tic­i­pants and sup­port­ers alike be­gan gath­er­ing at UWI to par­take in this won­der­ful event.The quiz con­sists of eight rounds, 10 ques­tions in each round. Schools were al­lowed to use lap­tops and re­search books if so de­sired and each team con­sist­ed of four mem­bers and back ups (if need­ed). The schools tak­ing part this year in­clud­ed AS­JA Boys' and Girls' Col­lege, Bish­op Anstey High School, Bish­op Anstey & Trin­i­ty, Fa­ti­ma Col­lege, Holy Faith Con­vent, Cou­va, Hillview Col­lege, Holy Cross Col­lege, Lak­sh­mi Girls' Hin­du Col­lege, Na­pari­ma Col­lege, Na­pari­ma Girls' High School, Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege Ch­agua­nas, Saint Au­gus­tine Girls' High School, Saint Joseph's Con­vent, Saint Mary's and our de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons - Wa­ter­loo Sec­ondary.

The evening start­ed with the open­ing re­marks from our Pres­i­dent, Si­mone Ren­wick, and the MC, Ren&ea­cute;e Lopez. The quiz then be­gan. This year the eight rounds in­clud­ed As­tro­nom­i­cal Terms and De­f­i­n­i­tions, The Earth and Moon, The So­lar Sys­tem, Stars, Con­stel­la­tions and Mythol­o­gy, Deep Sky, Comets As­ter­oids and Dwarf Plants and fi­nal­ly Light Op­tics and Spec­tra.The quiz pro­gressed quick­ly and smooth­ly while the love­ly tro­phy await­ed the hands of the vic­tors along with a state-of-the-art New­ton­ian tele­scope.Why is Hal­ley's Comet so spe­cial? Dur­ing a lu­nar eclipse, which side of the moon gets dark first?

These are just two of the 80 ques­tions asked at the quiz. So you could imag­ine the brain pick­ing that was tak­ing place.It was near­ing the com­ple­tion of the quiz and the ten­sion kept build­ing as the last round be­gan. And so the last ques­tion hit the screen and in the blink of an eye the quiz came to an end. It was re­sults time now and the ten­sion was the size of Jupiter. Judges tab­u­lat­ed the re­sults, checked and rechecked and then the re­sults were in. In third place was Na­pari­ma Col­lege while Hillview Col­lege came in sec­ond. The 2011 As­tron­o­my Champs turned out to be Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege Ch­agua­nas. Con­grat­u­la­tions to the school!