Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ rocks, minerals, crystals, and gemstones — with properties, formation, colors, hardness, and how to tell them apart.
Flame Opal
A glowing orange-to-red opal whose warm body color resembles flame; some stones add flashes of play-of-color.
gemstoneFrosted Obsidian
Natural obsidian with a frosted, matte surface produced by weathering, abrasion, or etching rather than a separate variety of glass.
igneousOrange Opal
A vivid orange opal, classically Mexican fire opal, prized for its bright, fiery body color that glows when backlit.
gemstoneMatte Obsidian
Obsidian with a dull, non-reflective surface from natural weathering or deliberate sandblasting/etching, rather than a distinct type of volcanic glass.
igneousGirasol Opal
A transparent to milky opal that displays a soft bluish-white internal glow or sheen that seems to follow the light source.
gemstonePinfire Opal
A precious opal pattern made of tiny, densely packed pinpoint flashes of play-of-color, like sparkling speckles across the stone.
gemstoneLemon Opal
A bright lemon-yellow opal, usually common opal, valued for its cheerful citrus color and translucent glow.
gemstoneSunset Opal
An opal with warm sunset hues of orange, amber, and red, prized for its glowing fiery body color reminiscent of dusk skies.
gemstoneStone Canyon Jasper
A warm-toned brecciated jasper from central California known for swirling browns, golds, and creams broken by darker seams.
gemstoneIlmenite
Ilmenite is the world's leading source of titanium, a heavy iron-black oxide common in mafic rocks and black sands.
mineralPrehnite
A translucent yellow-green silicate famous for its botryoidal 'grape' clusters, often hosting needle-like sprays of black epidote.
mineralFlame Agate
A chalcedony agate with red, orange, and yellow plume or banding patterns that rise like dancing flames within the stone.
gemstoneCondor Agate
A vividly banded fortification agate from Argentina prized for its bold red, gold and white concentric patterns.
gemstonePurple Agate
A purple-toned banded chalcedony, sometimes naturally amethystine but frequently produced by dyeing gray agate.
gemstoneGreenschist
A green, foliated low-grade metamorphic rock colored by chlorite, actinolite, and epidote, marking the greenschist metamorphic facies.
metamorphicGranulite
A high-grade metamorphic rock formed in the deep, hot crust, marked by anhydrous minerals like pyroxene and garnet.
metamorphicTurbidite
A graded sedimentary deposit laid down by underwater turbidity currents, recording avalanches of sediment cascading down submarine slopes.
sedimentaryIceland Spar
A transparent, optical-grade variety of calcite famous for strong double refraction, splitting images and light into two rays.
mineralFlame Jasper
A fiery jasper whose red, orange, and yellow plumes lick across the stone like flames against an earthy background.
mineralCherry Opal
A translucent red opal, closely related to Mexican fire opal, glowing with a warm cherry-red body color often free of play-of-color.
gemstoneFlint
A hard, dark variety of chert that knaps into razor-sharp edges and sparks against steel, central to Stone Age technology.
sedimentaryHarlequin Opal
The rarest and most coveted opal play-of-color pattern, showing large, evenly spaced, angular mosaic patches of color.
gemstoneSpencer Opal
Precious opal from Spencer, Idaho, occurring in thin colorful seams that are typically cut into triplets.
gemstoneSunset Tourmaline
A warm-hued tourmaline blending orange, pink and red tones reminiscent of a sunset sky.
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