St. Nicholas visits IMAU

-by Anneke Batenburg

On December 1st, St. Nicholas made his yearly visit to the department of Physics and Astronomy, accompanied by his Black Peters.  This year, the IMAU got the honor to be the first institute of the day to be visited. Because of the sensitive equipment, the traditional throwing of shortbread and candies was banned in the laboratory. Plenty of candy was, however, distributed over the rest of the sixth floor.
Later that day, St Nicholas held his traditional colloquium. For not completely clear reasons, the writer of this article was called forward during this colloquium and received a chocolate letter.

Figure 1: The `cockpit’ of the H2 isotope measurement system

Figure 1: St. Nicholas at the IMAU secretariat.

 

Figure 2: Some of the electronics that were added to automatically control the valves of the system

Figure 2:No throwing of candy was allowed in the laboratory.

 

Figure 3: In this part of the system, a trap is submerged in liquid nitrogen in an airtight pot that is kept at reduced pressure. Before, the human operator had to fill the pot with liquid nitrogen before each measurement. This is now done automatically.

Figure 3: A happy recipient of candy!

 

Figure 4: The automatic sample selection manifold. The big cans that are attached to the manifold in the picture contain samples that were collected in the stratosphere by a research aircraft.

Figure 4: Black Peter discusses science with Dr. Rupert Holzinger.