J Potter-Miller

Gardener planting trees and native plants wherever I can, co-chair of Friends of Patterson Park @patterson_atx

[J Potter-Miller @jpottermiller]

@GurdeepPandher Congratulations!

[J Potter-Miller @jpottermiller]

@TheWildNorthTV So crazy cute!

[J Potter-Miller @jpottermiller]

@FreddyLA7 We stopped at Warren Dunes State Park in New Buffalo, Michigan and it was stunning! The great lakes are amazing.

[J Potter-Miller @jpottermiller]

@AustinCityParks Yayyyy 🥳

[J Potter-Miller @jpottermiller]

Talaricooooooooo ⚽️

[Talarico en Español @TalaricoEspanol]

.@JamesTalarico acaba de lanzar su nuevo anuncio para el Mundial!

Se emitirá por todo Texas en Telemundo.

¡Talaricooooooooo!

[J Potter-Miller @jpottermiller]

@TheWildNorthTV AMAZING 🤩

[J Potter-Miller @jpottermiller]

@GeoffMarcs @YourAnonNews Seriously! how hard is that?

[J Potter-Miller @jpottermiller]

@CBSMornings @johnkrausphotos Dying of the awesomeness!

[J Potter-Miller @jpottermiller]

@RachelBitecofer Wow.

[Anish Moonka @anishmoonka]

Your eyes can only see the moon in gray. It's actually covered in color, blues and oranges and pinks, all from different metals sitting in the rock. You just need a camera and some patience to pull them out.

These photos are called "mineral moons." A photographer points a telescope at the moon, takes hundreds or thousands of pictures, stacks them on top of each other to clean up the image, then slowly turns up the color intensity in editing software. The colors that show up were always there. Too faint for your eyes to catch on their own.

Each color is a different metal. The blue areas have a lot of titanium in them. The orange and brown zones have more iron. The pinkish-red patches around the edges are the oldest parts of the moon's crust, full of aluminum and calcium.

That deep blue region on the left side is called the Sea of Tranquility. Apollo 11 landed right there in July 1969. When Armstrong and Aldrin brought back 47 pounds of rock from that blue titanium zone, scientists cracked the samples open and found three minerals that had never been seen on Earth before. They named one "armalcolite" after the three astronauts (Arm-Al-Col: Armstrong, Aldrin, Collins). They named another "tranquillityite" after the landing site itself. For 40 years, tranquillityite was known as "the moon's own mineral" because nobody could find it here. Then in 2011, a geologist in Western Australia spotted a speck of it inside a billion-year-old rock.

Andrew McCarthy, a photographer in Sacramento, once stacked 150,000 separate pictures of the moon to build one color map. Each splash of blue or orange in these images is a real metal deposit on a surface that's been getting hit by space rocks for 3.5 billion years. The moon was never gray. We just couldn't see it.

[Anish Moonka @anishmoonka]

Christina Koch was a firefighter at the South Pole at -111°F before she ever applied to be an astronaut. That was maybe the fourth most interesting line on her resume. She grew up in North Carolina, got three degrees from NC State, and her first real job was building deep-space instruments at NASA.

Then she left for Antarctica. Spent three and a half years bouncing between the Arctic and Antarctic as a research scientist, including a full winter at the South Pole base. That means going months without sunlight or fresh food, with a crew of about 50 people and no way out until flights resume. While she was down there, she also joined the glacier search-and-rescue team.

After coming back, she went to Johns Hopkins and built instruments for two NASA missions (one of them is still orbiting Jupiter right now). She figured out how to start a tiny vacuum pump that NASA designed for a future Mars rover. Johns Hopkins nominated it for their Invention of the Year in 2009. Then she went back to the field. More time in Antarctica and a stretch up in Greenland. A government research station in northern Alaska, near the top of the world. Then she ran another one in American Samoa, near the equator.

In 2013, NASA selected her from 6,300 applicants. Eight people got in. Her first space mission was supposed to be a normal rotation on the International Space Station, but NASA extended it. She ended up staying 328 straight days and orbiting Earth 5,248 times, covering about 139 million miles (roughly 291 round trips to the Moon). Up there, she ran over 210 experiments, including tests of cancer drugs in zero gravity and 3D printers that can build structures close to human tissue. Six spacewalks, 42 hours floating outside the station. She learned Russian for the training. She flies supersonic jets.

Right now, Koch is on Artemis II, heading for a flyby behind the far side of the Moon. The crew launched on April 1 and is on track to travel about 252,000 miles from Earth, which would break the all-time human distance record of 248,655 miles set by Apollo 13 in 1970. That record has stood for 56 years, and it was set during a disaster that nearly killed the crew. Fred Haise, one of the Apollo 13 astronauts, is 92 now. He told Koch: "I heard you're going to break our record."

Nobody had left Earth's neighborhood since December 1972. Koch and her three crewmates are the first in 53 years, and they are coming home at about 25,000 mph. That is faster than any crewed spacecraft has ever come back through the atmosphere.

[J Potter-Miller @jpottermiller]

@erikkuna @IAPonomarenko @SuperclusterHQ @MiopsTrigger @CanonUSA @NASAArtemis WOW 🤩

[J Potter-Miller @jpottermiller]

So many Artemis tweets, so much water leaking from my face ❤️🚀🌘

[Baltimore County @BaltCoGov]

When @astro_reid was a senior at Dulaney High School, the caption under his yearbook photo began with the words “FUTURE PLANS: Fly high.”

Tonight, he’s commanding NASA’s Artemis II—the first crewed mission to fly around the moon in over 50 years.

We’re so proud to be cheering him and his crew on from Baltimore County. We know @BaltCoPS is especially proud! 🚀🌓

[J Potter-Miller @jpottermiller]

@data_atx @MichaelEWebber I love the APP piece in my neighborhood, at Pharr Tennis Center. I think the program is a fantastic.

[Neera Tanden🌻 @neeratanden]

Great article by @tomfriedman on Minnesota. The most powerful in our country have caved to Trump, but our democracy is being saved by everyday Americans who are standing up to protect their neighbors, and are protecting our democracy as they do so.
https://t.co/EMQ30mz6Qu

[J Potter-Miller @jpottermiller]

@AGunusen @JECornforth @paulhuttnerwx Pi-Day Storm!

[Don Pettit @astro_Pettit]

The Milky Way as seen from @Space_Station, with stars as points, rising sun, and cities as golden streaks below.

Taken with Nikon Z9, Sigma 14mm f1.4 lens, 15 seconds, f1.4, ISO 6400, with homemade orbital sidereal drive to compensate for orbital pitch rate (4 degrees/min)

[J Potter-Miller @jpottermiller]

@LaikenJordahl @heavyredaction Stunning!

[James Talarico @jamestalarico]

President Trump wants to build a wall through Big Bend National Park.

One of the most sacred places in Texas.

Texans have a message for him: Come and take it.

[J Potter-Miller @jpottermiller]

@BulwarkOnline @SarahLongwell25 Minnesotans leading the world in courage, empathy, and action.