Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ rocks, minerals, crystals, and gemstones — with properties, formation, colors, hardness, and how to tell them apart.
Peruvian Blue Opal
A translucent common opal from the Andes prized for its serene blue to blue-green color, usually cut into cabochons and beads.
gemstoneCat's Eye Opal
An opal cut to show chatoyancy, a sharp moving band of light like a cat's eye, usually in honey, green or yellow common opal.
gemstone
Coober Pedy Opal
Australia's classic light-bodied precious opal from Coober Pedy, famed for milky white stones flashing pastel rainbow play-of-color.
gemstone
Mexican Fire Opal
A transparent to translucent opal prized for its glowing orange-to-red body color, mined chiefly in the volcanic highlands of Mexico.
gemstoneContra-Luz Opal
A rare opal whose play-of-color appears only when light passes through it, glowing best when backlit or held to the light.
gemstone
Yowah Nut Opal
Small ironstone concretions from Yowah, Queensland, whose hollow or veined centers hold brilliant precious boulder opal.
gemstone
Virgin Valley Opal
Nevada's famous precious opal, including vivid black opal and opalized wood, renowned for brilliance but a notable tendency to craze.
gemstoneWhite Cliffs Opal
Precious opal from the historic White Cliffs field in New South Wales, Australia, famous for light opal and rare opal pineapples.
gemstone
Lightning Ridge Opal
Opal from Lightning Ridge, Australia, the world's premier source of black opal with brilliant color on a dark body.
gemstone
Porcelanite
A hard, fine-grained siliceous rock with a dull porcelain-like texture, intermediate between soft diatomite and dense chert.
sedimentary
Radiolarite
A hard, fine-grained siliceous rock built from the microscopic silica skeletons of radiolarians, often forming colorful ribbon-banded cherts.
sedimentary
Talc-carbonate Rock
A soft metamorphic rock made of talc and magnesite or dolomite, formed by hydrothermal alteration of ultramafic rocks.
metamorphic
Flint
A hard, dark variety of chert that knaps into razor-sharp edges and sparks against steel, central to Stone Age technology.
sedimentary
Opalite
A man-made opalescent glass that glows milky blue in reflected light and warm orange when backlit, often sold as a crystal.
crystal
Girasol Quartz
A translucent milky quartz that shows a soft, floating blue-white glow when light passes through it.
crystal
Almandine Garnet
The most common garnet, an iron aluminum silicate in deep red to brownish-red hues, used as a gem and an industrial abrasive.
gemstone
Schorl
The common iron-rich black variety of tourmaline, by far the most abundant tourmaline species and a popular grounding crystal.
mineral
Rock Salt
An evaporite rock of the mineral halite (sodium chloride), the source of common salt, with a distinctive salty taste.
sedimentary
Banded Iron Formation
Ancient chemically deposited rock of alternating iron-oxide and silica bands recording Earth's early oxygenation and a major iron ore source.
sedimentary
Halite
The natural mineral form of table salt, a soft, water-soluble evaporite that forms perfect cubic crystals and tastes salty.
mineral
Orthoclase
A common rock-forming potassium feldspar, the Mohs hardness reference at 6, found in granites and used in ceramics and glassmaking.
mineral
Turquoise
A prized blue to blue-green copper-aluminium phosphate, often veined with dark matrix, treasured for jewelry across many cultures.
mineralOwyhee Blue Agate
A soft sky-blue chalcedony from the Owyhee region of Oregon and Idaho, prized for its calming, opaque powder-blue color.
gemstone
Petrified Wood
Ancient wood whose organic tissue has been replaced by silica, preserving the grain, rings, and structure of the original tree in stone.
sedimentary