Friday Glow Blogging: Novacekite

This brilliant green novacekite is from Mexico. It’s one of the most brilliant specimens we own, and it fluoresces when exposed to shortwave ultraviolet lighting.

This week’s glowblog entry is a creamy brown piece of fluorite from Ohio. Activated by long-wave ultraviolet light, this piece stands in contrast to the more brightly colored blue fluorite, such as what may be found in England. It’s also interesting in that Ohio and Kentucky do produce large amounts of fluorite, in the form of large, dramatic crystals, but most of it doesn’t glow. We obtained this 2″ specimen at the ‘96 Tucson Mineral Show.

One of a few nice pieces we picked up at the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show a few years ago, this is a fine specimen of crystal calcite that was originally collected in Florida. It shines with a soft blue glow when illuminated with long-wave UV lighting.

Rich red calcite combine with creamy white barite to form one of my favorite mineral combinations. This is one of the famous Franklin specimens, and is seen illuminated by shortwave UV lighting.

Hey, I’ve seen Friday Orchid Blogging as well as the now prototypical Friday Cat Blogging, so I’m adding Friday Glowrocks Blogging, a new, occasional feature of this site featuring images from my collection of fluorescent minerals. Glowrocks is a term I coined for referring to minerals that fluoresce under ultraviolet (UV) lighting.

This week’s entry is a slight closeup of a mineral known as halite. It’s more commonly known as salt, or in this form as rock salt. This halite was deposited around branches of sagebrush near the Salton Sea, and the resultant rock glows bright red-orange under short-wave UV illumination. The dark spot in the upper left is part of the sagebrush.