Owen Missen
@scimissionowen.bsky.social
Lecturer in Environmental Geology at Earth Sciences and CODES at UTAS, focusing on Critical Element distribution and mobility! New minerals are cool! I also enjoy hiking and tennis. Views my own.
What a bizarre mineral! I had to vote cuprite.
Mineral Cup & Ore Cup@mineralcup.bsky.social · 3h ago#MinCup26 SEMI-FINALS!!! It's showdown of the soft and cubical as coppery #Cuprite and salty #Halite compete for a spot in the finals! Both are worthy, but only one can have your vote. VOTE: www.mineralcup.org/2026/vote-re... RESULTS: www.mineralcup.org/2026/vote-re...
Cuprite is red as the copper is in copper 1+ oxidation state, not copper 2+ which has the more common blues and greens - competing against halite, best known as an evaporite mineral. Salty fluids are also key to transporting metals in both hydrothermal and surface environments as chloride complexes!
Mineral Cup & Ore Cup@mineralcup.bsky.social · 3h ago#MinCup26 SEMI-FINALS!!! It's showdown of the soft and cubical as coppery #Cuprite and salty #Halite compete for a spot in the finals! Both are worthy, but only one can have your vote. VOTE: www.mineralcup.org/2026/vote-re... RESULTS: www.mineralcup.org/2026/vote-re...
Pyromorphite vs cylindrite, both lead containing minerals but very different! Pyromorphite (Pb5(PO4)3Cl) - apatite structure, found in oxidised zones of lead deposits. Cylindrite (Pb3Sn4FeSb2S14) - sulfide mineral with an unusual cylindrical structural habit, due to incommensurate modulation.
Mineral Cup & Ore Cup@mineralcup.bsky.social · last wk.#MinCup26 Round 2 Match 6: It's a pair of soft, heavy lead minerals as vivid hexagonal phosphate #Pyromorphite is against spiralling rolled sheets of #Cylindrite. VOTE: www.mineralcup.org/2026/vote-re... RESULTS: www.mineralcup.org/2026/vote-re...
Putnisite contains essential chromium - like stichtite yesterday - while julienite's vibrant blue comes not from copper, but from cobalt! Putnisite: SrCa4Cr3+8(CO3)8SO4(OH)16 · 23H2O Julienite: Na2[Co(SCN)4] · 8H2O NB: SCN- is the thiocyanate anion, julienite is the only mineral known with SCN!
Mineral Cup & Ore Cup@mineralcup.bsky.social · last wk.#MinCup26 Round 2 Match 5 It's a pair or rare, vibrant minerals with unusual chemistry as purple #Putnisite is up against blue #Julienite. VOTE: www.mineralcup.org/2026/vote-re... RESULTS: www.mineralcup.org/2026/vote-re...
This is the kind of Mineral Cup match up that is particularly enjoyable for me. Admittedly, neither of these two minerals are common, and nor do they have major uses. But they remind us of the wonder of the natural world and its ability to produce amazing crystals!
Mineral Cup & Ore Cup@mineralcup.bsky.social · last wk.#MinCup26 Round 2 Match 5 It's a pair or rare, vibrant minerals with unusual chemistry as purple #Putnisite is up against blue #Julienite. VOTE: www.mineralcup.org/2026/vote-re... RESULTS: www.mineralcup.org/2026/vote-re...
A vote for silvery skutterudite is also a vote for bright pink erythrite, vanquished last round in the battle of cobalt-arsenic minerals! Let's join forces rather than revenge vote this time 😅
Mineral Cup & Ore Cup@mineralcup.bsky.social · 2w ago#MinCup26 Round 2 Match 2 It’s a match of opposites as heavy metal toxic #Skutterudite is up against the colourful sparkly aluminum silicate jewelry gem #Vesuvianite. VOTE: www.mineralcup.org/2026/vote-re... RESULTS: www.mineralcup.org/2026/vote-re...
cassiterite is 100 votes behind, needs a miracle! keep those votes coming!
Mineral Cup & Ore Cup@mineralcup.bsky.social · 2w ago#MinCup26 Round 1 Match 16 It's a pair of industrially-vital minerals for the final match of the first round as tin ore #Cassiterite is up against elemental carbon #Graphite. VOTE: www.mineralcup.org/2026/vote-re... RESULTS: www.mineralcup.org/2026/vote-re...
Xocolatlite is a tellurium mineral with a great name, and features in the 10th edition of Mineral Cup, five years after the most unlikely of champions, quetzalcoatlite! Xocolatlite also has the distinction of being described by my phd supervisor Joel Brugger and team!
Mineral Cup & Ore Cup@mineralcup.bsky.social · 2w ago#MinCup26 Round 1 Match 15 It's blue vs red for vibrant cyan-blue #Chrysocolla vs rich chocolatey red-brown #Xocolatlite. Are you with the hydrous copper silicate or the tellurate? VOTE: www.mineralcup.org/2026/vote-re... RESULTS: www.mineralcup.org/2026/vote-re...
Chrysocolla is beautiful but I had to draw something for Xocolatlite #MinCup26
Mineral Cup & Ore Cup@mineralcup.bsky.social · 2w ago#MinCup26 Round 1 Match 15 It's blue vs red for vibrant cyan-blue #Chrysocolla vs rich chocolatey red-brown #Xocolatlite. Are you with the hydrous copper silicate or the tellurate? VOTE: www.mineralcup.org/2026/vote-re... RESULTS: www.mineralcup.org/2026/vote-re...
I confess that before this Mineral Cup I had never heard of julienite! It's our third cobalt mineral of 2026, and is a coordination compound salt containing the thiocyanate anion. You don't see formulae like Na2[Co(SCN)4]·8H2O too often, julienite is the only SCN mineral yet known!
Mineral Cup & Ore Cup@mineralcup.bsky.social · 3w ago#MinCup26 Round 1 Match 11 It's a pair of minerals that pull off near-magical tricks with their properties as ubiquitous #Calcite is up against rarity #Julienite. VOTE: www.mineralcup.org/2026/vote-re... RESULTS: www.mineralcup.org/2026/vote-re...
Calcite hardly needs an introduction. Its reactivity with acid and 3 strong cleavage planes (great when teaching first year mineralogy), amazing variety of forms and importance for CO2 storage give us plenty of reasons that calcite might be a favourite.
Mineral Cup & Ore Cup@mineralcup.bsky.social · 3w ago#MinCup26 Round 1 Match 11 It's a pair of minerals that pull off near-magical tricks with their properties as ubiquitous #Calcite is up against rarity #Julienite. VOTE: www.mineralcup.org/2026/vote-re... RESULTS: www.mineralcup.org/2026/vote-re...
Not quite sure how #pyromorphite will fare against the (literal) crystal juggernaut that is #gypsum - but I really liked the (VESTA default) halloween-esque colour scheme to it's elements to day so the small green crystal machine gets my vote in today's #MinCup26
Mineral Cup & Ore Cup@mineralcup.bsky.social · 3w ago#MinCup26 Round 1 Match 10: It’s a pair of soft minerals that form near the surface as heavyweight #pyromorphite is up against evaporate #gypsum. VOTE: www.mineralcup.org/2026/vote-re... RESULTS: www.mineralcup.org/2026/vote-re...
Wow wow wow! Giant underground gypsum (selenite) crystals ftw! #MinCup26
c0nc0rdance@c0nc0rdance.bsky.social · last yr.Take a minute to really absorb the scale of what you're seeing. This is 'Cueva de los Cristales', the Cave of the Crystals, near the city of Naica in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. The crystals are selenite, a type of gypsum. They formed over the last 1 million years. (📷: Javier Trueba, MSF)
Beautiful, twinned, translucent, and hexagonal prisms of lead-bearing, apple-green pyromorphite. Relatively safe if basic safety rules are taken, and highly collectible, but NO licking. #MinCup26 ⚒️ sci-fi 🧪 🖖🏼 scifi Geosciences #WomenInSTEM geology #geosky #GIS 🍎 🪐 🔭 🌋 📚 🌿
Gypsum is a beautifully versatile mineral, found in a range of sedimentary environments, sometimes in flower shaped forms ('desert rose' isn't a flower, but gypsum - often with some quartz grains!). Gypsum is widely used in construction, particularly in plaster and cement-making applications.
Mineral Cup & Ore Cup@mineralcup.bsky.social · 3w ago#MinCup26 Round 1 Match 10: It’s a pair of soft minerals that form near the surface as heavyweight #pyromorphite is up against evaporate #gypsum. VOTE: www.mineralcup.org/2026/vote-re... RESULTS: www.mineralcup.org/2026/vote-re...
Pyromorphite sounds like some kind of fire demon, the name actually coming from its behaviour of reforming crystals after being melted into a globule! Old names included 'plumbo viridis' (green lead - pyromorphite being lead phosphate chloride). Vanadinite (V swapped for P) shares this structure!
Mineral Cup & Ore Cup@mineralcup.bsky.social · 3w ago#MinCup26 Round 1 Match 10: It’s a pair of soft minerals that form near the surface as heavyweight #pyromorphite is up against evaporate #gypsum. VOTE: www.mineralcup.org/2026/vote-re... RESULTS: www.mineralcup.org/2026/vote-re...
Hafnium's only mineral up against purple putnisite. Second beautiful purple chromium 3+ mineral in two days, with some chemical similarities (group 2 metal - chromium - carbonate - hydroxide - hydrate). Stichtite: Mg6Cr3+2(OH)16[CO3] · 4H2O Putnisite: SrCa4Cr3+8(CO3)8SO4(OH)16 · 23H2O
Mineral Cup & Ore Cup@mineralcup.bsky.social · 3w ago#MinCup26 Round 1 Match 9: It’s a pair of tiny minerals with unusual chemistry as hafnium-containing #Hafnon battles with strontium/chromium-containing #Putnisite. VOTE: www.mineralcup.org/2026/vote-re... RESULTS: www.mineralcup.org/2026/vote-re...
Stichtite is particularly famous in Tasmania, first found from appropriately named Stichtite Hill (not sure what the previous name of the site was!). It's the most famous mineral first found in Tasmania, although crocoite is Tasmania's state mineral emblem. Both contain soluble chromium!
Mineral Cup & Ore Cup@mineralcup.bsky.social · 3w ago#MinCup26 Round 1 Match 8: It’s a pair of soft and lovely minerals as Stichtite and Talc compete for your votes. VOTE: www.mineralcup.org/2026/vote-re... RESULTS: www.mineralcup.org/2026/vote-re...
Monazite doubles as a source of (mainly light) rare-earth elements and as a geochronometer, due to the uranium and thorium often incorporated into its crystal structure . Monazite-(Ce) is the most common form, with La, Nd, Sm and Gd dominant monazites also known in decreasing order of commonality.
Mineral Cup & Ore Cup@mineralcup.bsky.social · 3w ago#MinCup26 Round 1 Match 7 It's a color-changing match of informative minerals! Time-tracker #Monazite-(Ce)'s yellow in sunlight darkens to orange in incandescent light while index mineral #Andalusite is pleochroic VOTE: www.mineralcup.org/2026/vote-re... RESULTS: www.mineralcup.org/2026/vote-re...
Quartz's apparent supremacy as the best mineral was the reason behind Eddie Dempsey creating the first Mineral Cup on Twitter back in 2017! Despite its importance to a wide range of geological and mineralogical sciences, quartz has never yet managed to win Mineral Cup. Could this be the year?
Mineral Cup & Ore Cup@mineralcup.bsky.social · 3w ago#MinCup26 Round 1 Match 6 It's a classic vs a newbie as the most common named mineral in the crust #Quartz is up against an exceedingly-rare sea foam-green mineral discovered just a few years ago #Asagiite. VOTE: www.mineralcup.org/2026/vote-re... RESULTS: www.mineralcup.org/2026/vote-re...
Asagiite is a new member of the ktenasite group, a class of hydrated basic metal sulfates that so far numbers four minerals, so far all in the form MCu4(SO4)2(OH)6.6H2O although analogues with different metals in the Cu site are possible. M=Ni in asagiite 'blue-green' in Japanese!
Mineral Cup & Ore Cup@mineralcup.bsky.social · 3w ago#MinCup26 Round 1 Match 6 It's a classic vs a newbie as the most common named mineral in the crust #Quartz is up against an exceedingly-rare sea foam-green mineral discovered just a few years ago #Asagiite. VOTE: www.mineralcup.org/2026/vote-re... RESULTS: www.mineralcup.org/2026/vote-re...
Orpiment was historically used as a pigment, taking advantage of its bright yellow-orange colour. However, orpiment is arsenic trisulfide (As2S3) and thus is very rarely used today. Fellow arsenic sulfide mineral realgar (As4S4) is bright red-orange... and also toxic!
Mineral Cup & Ore Cup@mineralcup.bsky.social · 3w ago#MinCup26 Round 1 Match 5 It's a fiery match of vibrant red #Cuprite and just as saturated orange #Orpiment battle for your votes! VOTE: www.mineralcup.org/2026/vote-re... RESULTS: www.mineralcup.org/2026/vote-re...
Zinc, gallium, and indium are all fixed points on the International Temperature Scale of 1990 (ITS-90) and are extremely useful for calibrating Platinum Resistance Thermometer (PRT) probes. So sphalerite gets my vote!
Owen Missen@scimissionowen.bsky.social · 4w agoVoting for zinc sulfide sphalerite! Sphalerite is also an important host for strategic metal zinc, plus a range of critical metals, especially gallium, germanium and indium (though not usually all three of them in the same crystals). www.mindat.org/photo-253687...
#Bournonite has 4 elements. Some lovely rare metals in the mix, and it can solid-solution on over to incorporate a 5th, but it’d very well-defined. Meanwhile, I straight-up gave up listing all the possible elements in #Vesuvianite because it was too freaking long. The rest. It has all the rest.
Mineral Cup & Ore Cup@mineralcup.bsky.social · 4w ago#MinCup26 Round 1 Match 4: Cogwheels of #Bournonite are up against colourful #Vesuvianite in a battle of unexpected chemical compositions. VOTE: www.mineralcup.org/2026/vote-re... RESULTS: www.mineralcup.org/2026/vote-re...
Bournonite for me! This sulfosalt is formed by lead, copper, antimony and sulfur. Another six minerals contain only these four elements and eleven further sulfosalts have Pb Cu Sb plus other metal(loid)s but bournonite is by far the most common of all of them!
Mineral Cup & Ore Cup@mineralcup.bsky.social · 4w ago#MinCup26 Round 1 Match 4: Cogwheels of #Bournonite are up against colourful #Vesuvianite in a battle of unexpected chemical compositions. VOTE: www.mineralcup.org/2026/vote-re... RESULTS: www.mineralcup.org/2026/vote-re...
Voting for zinc sulfide sphalerite! Sphalerite is also an important host for strategic metal zinc, plus a range of critical metals, especially gallium, germanium and indium (though not usually all three of them in the same crystals). www.mindat.org/photo-253687...
mindat.org
Mineral Cup & Ore Cup@mineralcup.bsky.social · 4w ago#MinCup26 Round 1 Match 3 Both zinc ore #Sphalerite and calcium plagioclase feldspar #Anorthite will split cleanly if you hit them with a hammer, but only one can claim a larger split of your votes! VOTE: www.mineralcup.org/2026/vote-re... RESULTS: www.mineralcup.org/2026/vote-re...
Argh!!! Neither are blue—yet BOTH can be used to MAKE blue? What do I do???
Mineral Cup & Ore Cup@mineralcup.bsky.social · 4w ago#MinCup26 Round 1 Match 2: Flowery pink #Erythrite is against shiny silver #Skutterudite in this match of cobalt minerals. Will you pick the weathering product or the mineral it comes from? VOTE: www.mineralcup.org/2026/vote-re... RESULTS www.mineralcup.org/2026/vote-re...
A lot of the erythrite pictures I found look kind of like that cranberry jelly they sell around Thanksgiving, so I guess I’ll vote for the forbidden cranberries.
Mineral Cup & Ore Cup@mineralcup.bsky.social · 4w ago#MinCup26 Round 1 Match 2: Flowery pink #Erythrite is against shiny silver #Skutterudite in this match of cobalt minerals. Will you pick the weathering product or the mineral it comes from? VOTE: www.mineralcup.org/2026/vote-re... RESULTS www.mineralcup.org/2026/vote-re...
cobalt vs cobalt! hard to pick here, and I love the weathering product vs the primary mineral!
Mineral Cup & Ore Cup@mineralcup.bsky.social · 4w ago#MinCup26 Round 1 Match 2: Flowery pink #Erythrite is against shiny silver #Skutterudite in this match of cobalt minerals. Will you pick the weathering product or the mineral it comes from? VOTE: www.mineralcup.org/2026/vote-re... RESULTS www.mineralcup.org/2026/vote-re...
carbonate vs carbonate! it's azurite for me, though it still astounds me that the simple form of copper carbonate CuCO3 is not found in nature. copper carbonates always have some OH to stabilise the structures in malachite and azurite!
Mineral Cup & Ore Cup@mineralcup.bsky.social · 4w ago#MinCup26 Round 1 Match 1: It's carbonate-vs-carbonate with copper-rich #Azurite against zinc-rich #Smithsonite. Which has your vote? VOTE: www.mineralcup.org/2026/vote-re... RESULTS: www.mineralcup.org/2026/vote-re...
