El Reg touches down at the ESA's Spanish outpost, sniffs around

Lab coats on, pipes at the ready for European Space Astronomy Centre tour

Before hitting the canteen for lunch - and I can confirm that Matt did not subject fellow diners to his lab coat in the end – we were able to grab a few more photos, including the young man holding forth in the ESAC auditorium...

...holding a bit of Hubble Space Telescope solar panel, originally supplied by ESA and returned by NASA following one of the servicing missions to the floating observatory...

...and fondling a 3D-printed model of comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko:

Thanks very much to Emmet Fletcher for the invite to ESAC, and to all the scientists who put up with our Playmonaut/pipe/lab coat tomfoolery. ®

Bootnote

We were sorely tempted to have off with this collection of memorabilia left by cosmonaut Oleg Artemiev, who'd just popped into ESAC:

Artemiev formed part of Expedition 39 to the International Space Station in 2014.