Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia

Search and identify 1,000+ rocks, minerals, crystals, and gemstones — with properties, formation, colors, hardness, and how to tell them apart.

Pele's Hair

Fine, golden, hair-like strands of basaltic volcanic glass spun from fluid lava droplets during eruptions, named for the Hawaiian volcano goddess.

A rare yellow to golden variety of andradite garnet, the topaz-colored cousin of green demantoid, prized for high dispersion and brilliance.

An intensely blue metamorphic rock of lazurite flecked with golden pyrite, prized for millennia as a gemstone and ultramarine pigment.

An old name for cesium-rich, often pink beryl (related to morganite), named after Russian mineralogist Victor Vorobyev.

The colorless to milky-white variety of beryl, known mineralogically as goshenite and once used to imitate diamond and other gems.