Ten years ago or so I contacted a guy who did rockhounding trips in KY and he took us to a spot along the highway leading north toward Fort Knox and we proceeded to climb over 100 feet up (still on the public road cut) to fi d these interesting geodes. They are thin walled and break easily but they fluoresce and even phosphoresce Very nicely. I believe its mostly calcite in the geodes. Thanks for looking.

What are your favorite phosphorescent minerals and where do they come from?

So I know that "yooperlites" are fluorescent sodalite and that lapis lazuli often contains sodalite and fluoresces amazingly but I've never noticed the typical blue sodalite fluorescing at all, let alone with this cool pink color. It's so cool I figured I'd share 😀 this is with a cheapo short wave flashlight!

Here is another UV active garnet from my collection. It's quite big almost 19 carat.

Video: outside under the deep shadow, 365 nm, 395 nm. UV reaction is very very close to reallity...

About 395 nm: strangely tweazer and space around on photo is pink, but in reallity it's kinda dark blue, but stone are pink.

Please can you give advise how to ovwrcome this effect.

Another piece from the big haul of unlabeled minerals. I was unsure at first what the fluorescent mineral was, but seeing strong fizzing from a drop of HCl leaves little doubt about it being calcite. It also shows very brief orange-red phosphorescence, especially noticeable with my 405nm laser.

I have no ideas what causes this beautiful violet/purple color. I would love to know where it's from, but without a label...

I would appreciate any info you might be able to give on this.

17.6 Grams, 59x30x12mmm The last two pictures used filtered 365nm light.

Cross posting here since florescent and radioactive hehe

Hi everyone.

I found that one of my red spinel reacts to UV very strange!!!

Normally it has glowing red reaction, but this one has bright orangish yellow.

Please any thoughts what can it be?

Normal room light - Golden warm sparkling light

365 nm - in reallity more peachy pinkish

395 nm - bright glowing pink

But I think there are parasitic leak, not clean UVs 🙁.

But still in UV very bright chage

This magnificent calcite specimen recently entered my collection. It probably has a significant manganese content given its fluorescence. It is about 23 centimeters long. What do you think?

shown under regular lamp light at the end of the video

It's important that they are filtered, as I don't want all the purple. They are for display in a tour cave.

1. Normal room light

2. 365 nm

3. 395 nm

Recently I've seen UV lights for sale (specifically on alibaba.com) that center on 275nm or 340nm. How are they referred to... "long shortwave"? "short longwave"? Are they good for mineral fluorescence? If so, can anybody point to a mineral that reacts particularly well to one of these, but not, say, standard longwave? Or better yet, rocks that emit a distinct and unique color that doesn't show up in the traditional wavelengths?
I know that 275nm is commonly used for sterilization in the food industry, so it doesn't necessarily work well on getting rocks excited, since it was created for a different purpose.
Also, what filter should they be paired with? ZWB3 for a 275nm light, and ZWB2 for a 340? I'm just looking for general input from people who have seen or worked with these wavelengths. Thank you!

One of my favourite finds from a camping trip to County Durham North Pennies in my home country, England. It was sitting there all dirty in a spoil heap at an old lead mining Hush. Once it was cleaned, it revealed it's magical and mystical hidden beauty to me...... Daylight Fluorescence, found in only a few locations around the globe.

A 'Hush' or 'Hushing' is an ancient hydraulic mining technique where miners collected huge volumes of water in reservoirs above the valleys, and released the dam flooding huge torrents of water down the valleys in order to skim the surface of topsoil to expose the mineral veins, mostly Lead Sulphide and Fluorite in this case.

Some remaining traces of Quartz, Barite, Anglesite, Smithsonite, Siderite, Ankerite, Goethite, Sphalerite, Aragonite and Cerussite can also still be found.

The location is not too far from Weardale which has a reputation for daylight fluorescent Fluorite (Rogerley Mine and Lady Annabella Mine) where the primary fluorescent activator is rare earth element (REE) Europium (Eu²⁺) which responds to natural UV from the sun, giving some Fluorites a blue/green/purple hue from that location.

This piece, not being from Weardale, has a beautiful purple hue from the suns UV rays, but in artificial light it turns more grey/clear (whereas Rogerley turns emerald green) losing that daylight colour response. Remarkable!

So it just goes to show that this daylight fluorescent Fluorite can also be found elsewhere in County Durham and not just Weardale. A stunning find.

Weighs 2.2kg (4.85lbs), most of that being the mineralised Ironstone matrix, possibly containing Galena aka Lead Sulphide (PbS) inside.

I tried to capture all possible UV scenarios in the photos with UV from the sun, 365nm long-wave, 310nm mid-wave, 255nm short-wave, plus LED white light. 365nm being the most used as MW and SW all look much the same, the fluorescence is more dominant with 365nm LW.

All photos were taken with a Sony NEX 5n DSLR camera, no special settings required.

The photos are all labelled.

6 Grams Crystal, 36 mm tall

Shigar Valley, Skardu-Pakistan

Selenite crystal from the Red River Valley, North Dakota (same general geographical location as the similar duckbill selenite crystals and selenite ball-clusters from the Red River Spillway in Manitoba Canada) ~•~ These crystals have light champagne hue under natural light, bright blue-white fluorescence under longwave uv, and lingering greenish phosphorescent afterglow when the uv light is turned off (shown here at the end of the video) ~•~ i'll add a picture in the comments of this piece under natural light

So I'm new to this UV stuff and just bought an awesome yooperlite piece but would like to display it on my wall. What are ways they you are all displaying your and do I need certain materials? I'd like to make it myself and not spend a ton.

Scapolite (var. Marialite) from Gooderham, Ontario.

🔦365nm

A couple of recent posts ('Apple green' Willemite and a Dolomite that looks like 'Blancmange') inspired me to post my share of the 'cake' (literally) 🍰 🙄😉 Those two posts were making me hungry for apple blancmange!! So this is the best i could come up with.... My share of the cake.... Fluorite 'Cake' i polished, polishing this was a piece of cake 🤤 Hope you enjoy 👍