5 facts day :)
1. The density of Saturn is so low that if you could put it in water it would float.
2. A piece of neutron star the size of a pinhead would weigh a million tons
3. Saturn has at least 62 moons
4. Light from the Sun travelling at 186,000mph takes 8mins 19secs to reach earth
5. The Sun makes up 99.86% of the solar systems mass.

Chuck Norris jokes
when Alexander bell invented the telephone he had 3 missed calls from Chuck Norris
fear of spiders is arcanaphobia, fear of tight spaces is claustrophobia, fear of Chuck Norris is called logic
Chuck Norris won American idol using only sign language
Jesus can walk on water, Chuck Norris can swim through land.

Venus transit will happen this year from 5th-6th June but this will only be visible in its entirety from Hawaii, Alaska, Australia the Pacific and Eastern Asia with the beginning of the transit visible from North America and the end visible from Europe.

Venus usually passes under or over the sun in its diagonal orbit, but there are two points in its orbit when it passes directly in front of the sun in its 225 day orbit, but the Venus transit only happens when Venus, Earth and the Sun directly line up as shown in this diagram.

The top shows Venus on its normal orbit and the bottom shows the Venus transit.

This will be an amazing spectacle lets hope it gets broadcast for all to see, as it will be 105 years till it happens again, in 2117, and then it will happen again in 8 years at 2125, and will go on and on for a very long time going 105 years then 8 years 105 years 8 years and on and on. The last time it happened was June 8th 2004, and the first recorded time was November 23 1396, people believe that Aztec astronomers may have seen this transit.

I would just like to say I will be carrying on the 5 facts a week, or I may do 5 facts every couple of days, maybe including a Chuck Norris joke :) (everybody loves Chuck Norris jokes)

This is just one of my pictures from my holiday in Africa of an amazing sunset over Ngorongroro crater, Tanzinia, it just shows the true beauty of our planet.

I would like to give a massive thanks to OPHIUCHUS for giving me such a warm welcome to the team as the new Editor of Astronomical Uplands, and a massive good bye to Jack Morgan as former editor (Mr meteor) but sadly as Jack is gone, I Alex Doe (little green man) will be taking over.

I am currently in the process of creating a new reporting team, and I promise they will be great.

New Reporters to Astronomical Uplands

I would like to give a huge thanks to Jack Morgan and his reporting team [Jon Perret, Adam Farmer and Nick Maxfield] for their excellent, interesting and fun articles over the last year.




The GCSE Astronomy class 2009-2011

In particular, Jack became our first student editor last year, and has done a grand job in kick-starting off the Student Voice, and it has been a pleasure to see what he has come up with next - I've personally really enjoyed reading ! Unfortunately, our original team have finished their GCSE course (Well done for the good grades! :-) ) are now into studying for their A levels, so haven't as much time to devote to the Astronomy blog. However, we are hopeful this isn't the end of Jack's involvement in the blog, and that there might be further contributions in the future...

So, thank you, once again, to the four of you for breaking new grounds and creating our first Astronomy reporting team!

Luckily, we have a new, enthusiastic Editor to take Jack's place. Year 9 Astronomy GCSE student, Alex Doe, has volunteered to become our new editor, and will be getting a team together over the next couple of weeks. As before, if you have a contribution to make to the blog, please give it to Alex, or myself (in the prep room opposite L8) and we will reward you with an astronomy badge. Welcome to the team, Alex!