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 royal-blue feldspathoid mineral with white calcite veining, often confused with lapis lazuli but lacking its golden pyrite flecks.

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.

A pale jasper threaded with black, fern-like mineral dendrites that mimic plants, trees, and frost despite being inorganic.

Purple-colored volcanic glass; genuine natural purple obsidian is rare, with much purple obsidian being manufactured colored glass.

A bronze-colored iron sulfide notable for being the most magnetic of the common sulfide minerals and an important nickel host.