Topaz from the Zapot pegmatite, Nevada, USA
A broken piece of a topaz crystal, bluish in daylight, with a surprisingly bright yellow fluorescence under longwave UV light. From: Zapot pegmatite, Gillis Range, Fitting Mining District, Mineral County, Nevada, USA.A miniature piece: 4 x 3 x 2 cm, 49 g.MinID:...
Willemite, Calcite & Dioptase from Gotala, Republic of the Congo
A streak of light green willemite crystal on a calcite matrix with a few, deep green, gemmy dioptase crystals as special guests. The willemite crystals are quite small, between 1 and 2 mm, but are all well formed, translucent, light green in color and there are scores...
Scheelite from Chenzhou, Hunan, China
Little cluster of well formed scheelite crystals. Dark colored in daylight, they fluoresce the typical bright blue under shortwave UV light and a quite nice orange/red under midwave UV light (a bit overexposed in the photo…). The blue shortwave fluorescence is...
The FMS at TGMS: 1996 and 2022
The TGMS and Annual Show The Tucson Gem and Mineral Society (TGMS) formed in 1946, and the first Tucson Gem and Mineral Show® was held in a local elementary school in 1955. The show grew to the point that in 1972 it moved to its present location in the Tucson...
The FMS hosts its largest meeting ever!
After a one-year postponement, the belated 50th anniversary of the FMS was celebrated at the 2022 Tucson Gem and Mineral Show® hosted by the Tucson Gem and Mineral Society (TGMS). “The Show That Glows.” The Fluorescent Mineral Society Pavilion, held in the newly finished addition to the Tucson Convention Center, was a must see, although…
Is my rock really fluorescent?
A question often asked: “Is the blue fluorescence in this rock real?”. This is a pretty common question, or often a wrong conclusion made by many first starting out in our hobby. Our UV lights have UV bandpass filters (“filter” defined here for our purposes as UV transmitting, visible blocking) which block the visible light…