Looky what I found...

[IronWing]

I was out hiking not too far from the house when I came upon an old mine dump. Some of the rocks were unusual for this area so I collected a suite of what was there for further identification. When I got home I decided to see if any fluoresced under UV light.

Here is a pic of the batch. Mostly calcite (orange) and aragonite (yellow, green) with a few specs of scheelite (blue-white). The aragonite is in the form of flow stone. The miners must have hit a small cave pocket. Some of the rocks appear more than once as I tried to figure out how to best photograph them.

http://www.mineralarts.com/images/fluormin1.jpg

Edit: Direct image link removed to save some page loading time and my bandwidth.

 

[lxskllr]

That's actually pretty cool. An aquarium with a black light would make a hip display for a rock collection.

 

[szechuanpork]

trippy

 

[Spikesoldier]

requesting pic under normal lighting

 

[IronWing]

requesting pic under normal lighting

Here ya go. Most of the ones in the pics above are here.

http://www.mineralarts.com/images/fluormin1reglight.jpg

Edit: Direct image link removed to save some page loading time and my bandwidth.

 

[zinfamous]

cool. I was hoping for another desert critter, but this will suffice.

 

[Imp]

Playing the batshit paranoid: that shit may be toxic...

 

[darkxshade]

How much fapping did it take to paint all that? D:

 

[Jeff7]

:thumbsup:

Nifty.

 

[IronWing]

Playing the batshit paranoid: that shit may be toxic...

The light is dangerous. The rocks you could eat.

 

[IronWing]

I went back to the mine dump and picked out some more specimens. One thing to note is that anything lit up below is fluorescing, there is almost no ambient light in the room. The blue specs are dust. Mainly what you are seeing is limestone (calcite, dark, not fluorescing) with an overgrowth of calcite crystals (CaCO3, orange) with an overgrowth of aragonite (also CaCO3, different crystal habit, yellow, green). The fourth and fifth are two sides of the same rock. The bottom left specimen is a stalagmite.

The overall geologic setting is a limestone intruded by a igneous dike which partially converted the limestone to marble and probably supplied the trace elements contributing to the fluorescence. Later cave formation dissolved some of the limestone/marble and redeposited it as aragonite.

http://www.mineralarts.com/images/fluormin2.jpg

Edit: Direct image link removed to save some page loading time and my bandwidth.

 

[zinfamous]

OP, are you a ranger, or something? You display some serious expertise in field biology and geology in your threads.

question: the only flouresence that I am familiar with is GFP, as I am a lame molecular biologist....Do these minerals flouresce naturally, or is it due to radioactive decay? Are you bringing back a barely-quantifiable helping of radiation to your home?

 

[IronWing]

OP, are you a ranger, or something? You display some serious expertise in field biology and geology in your threads.

question: the only flouresence that I am familiar with is GFP, as I am a lame molecular biologist....Do these minerals flouresce naturally, or is it due to radioactive decay? Are you bringing back a barely-quantifiable helping of radiation to your home?

I'm a geologist. The fluorescence is natural. No radioactivity; they aren't emitting any light on their own. The photos are taken with UV lamp shining on the rocks. The fluorescent minerals absorb the UV light and re-emit in the visible spectrum.

I do have radioactive rocks as well, mostly carnotite, a uranium ore mineral. I keep those in the shed.

 

[slayer202]

so cool...

 

[brianmanahan]

looky looky i got a hooky

 

[busydude]

Pretty awesome. :thumbsup:

 

[Red Squirrel]

That's actually pretty cool. An aquarium with a black light would make a hip display for a rock collection.

In water, with fish in it. Though I have a feeling the UV light would be really bad for the fish lol.

When I was a kid I was a lot into rocks. We actually had an area setup where we would smash rocks to see what was inside. Sometimes we'd find interesting stuff, sometimes even gold. usually fools gold, but it was still cool. I had a few with real gold, I kinda wish I had kept them. Not sure what I even did with em.

 

[Azraele]

Neato.

I collect cool rocks. I wish I could find some like that.

 

[IronWing]

I've been doing some more collecting and started a fluorescent rock garden in the back yard. Here are a couple movies I shot last night. Turn the sound off as it is just fan noise from the UV light. The videography is a bit crappy as I had to perch the camera on top of the light as I moved around and contend with the light cord plus the bazillion very confused moths swarming the light as well. But the rocks are cool. Under normal light the rocks are white, gray, tan, or black.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWUUdgGZMzM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8PL66Wl9YE

 

[IronWing]

I collected a few more specimens and improved my photo technique a bit. Lumix LX5, 60sec exposure, f4.5, use a flashlight to focus, turn the flashlight off, open the shutter, and walk around with the UV light. I'll have to camp out at the mine again and see if I can get the whole mine to glow.

Here's a link to a page I set up with more pics, including a few thin section pics under a microscope.

Fluorescent Minerals from Southern Arizona

 

[zinfamous]

Do you live on Mars?







gorgeous.

 

[Jodell88]

Those are wallpaper worthy pictures.

Beautiful stones.

 

[RavenSEAL]

I collected a few more specimens and improved my photo technique a bit. Lumix LX5, 60sec exposure, f4.5, use a flashlight to focus, turn the flashlight off, open the shutter, and walk around with the UV light. I'll have to camp out at the mine again and see if I can get the whole mine to glow.

Wow, thanks so much for sharing, this is awesome

 

[sandorski]

Looks cool, but I have some bad news

 

[bguile]

What sort of UV light do you need to make the rocks glow? Was thinking of buying one of those led uv lights for ~ 15$ off amazon.