Quick Nighttime Fluorescent Mineral Hunt

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Little cooler today so I hiked out to the Nancy Ann Mine with my heavy shortwave field lamp to do a nighttime fluorescent mineral hunt. Saw this rattler just in time to step back. Still close enough to get rattled at. #hiking#mining#inyocounty#flourescent #rocks#geology#mojavedesert

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Further up the trail. #geology #roadtrip #rockhound #inyocounty #hiking#minerals#mining #prospecting#

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Glow sticks mark off important points. They’re not meant to illuminate but these from Home Depot are very bright. I came back with a headlamp, of course. #desert#mojave#mojavedesert#rocks #geology #minerals #inyocounty #hiking#explore

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Unedited bat footage. Fairly recent maps call this the Shaw Mine when in actuality there are a number of entrances and the name has changed from owner to owner. Open ground now that is in Wilderness status and only walking permitted. No bicycles, no handcarts, no machines of any kind. #nopahwilderness #roadtrip #geology#inyocounty #pahrump #mojavedesert #hiking

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A few nice red pieces but nearly everything else is yellow calcite that fluoresces under SW and LW. The red material only fluoresces SW. You can see in the first few seconds that even my Dragonfly won’t light up this side of the rock but then SW gives a nice red. The other side glows the usual calcite yellow. #flourescent #hiking #mojavedesert#geology #geologyrocks #mining #minerals #inyocounty#nopahrange

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I’m always hesitant about leaving my vehicle at night near a major road. I turned off my headlamp a quarter mile before the trailhead and walked with only moonlight in case something was waiting. No one at the vehicle but very loud music from another vehicle a hundred yards away out in the creosote, the first human activity I’ve encountered at this trailhead. I had my keys in hand and motored away in seconds. I’m sure those people were friendly but I wasn’t going to chance it at night and beyond cell phone range. My sat phone would need a few minutes to connect. I might not have had that time. #mohave #desert#hiking#explore#geology#geologyrocks#mining#history #inyocounty#

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Making my way back. #geology #roadtrip #rockhound #hiking ##mining#nopahrange#inyocounty#explore#geology#desert#mojavedesert

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Unedited handheld iPhone video. SW. Properly photographing fluorescent minerals takes a tripod and hours of fiddling to get the colors correctly displaying what they actually show under a lamp. The blue rock shows the infamous blue bleed that every photographer fights against, it is a problem between camera settings and the lamps themselves. Getting every rock in a group to show correctly on your screen is a major project, a great deal done in post. Too much time in post! #ecplore#geology#flourescent #minerals#madness#desert#mojavedesert#inyocounty

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Beyond Books

It was recently recommended on an FB page that I read some field guides on rock and mineral ID. This was in response to some specific observations I made with material I had collected and with reference specimens I had bought. The suggester offered no further advice or any response to my observations which he didn’t read through. At least five people gave him a thumbs up. That’s extremely discouraging when all I was trying to do was help.

Well, I have a few books. Quite a lot, actually. But you have to go beyond books to learn more. You can’t teach a geology course without lab work or field trips. Books are fine but rocks and minerals and prospecting are also hands on.

To make specific, this poster stated that, among other things, that some sedimentary rocks do not fizz under acid. But he didn’t tell me which ones. Nothing of his personal experience with this, just an admonition to read some books. None of the books I have read list the sedimentary rocks that do not respond. I was trying to learn, not sure what he was trying to do. I was sharing my experiences and observations, he was sharing nothing but negativity.

This is a look at part of my reference collection of over two hundred rock types and various minerals. They are mostly hand or teaching specimen size. All labeled in detail. At any time I can pull something out to test or experiment it using my hardness picks, my acid, my metal detectors, my UV lamps, my black and white streak plates, my super magnet, my microscope, or my geiger counters. No, I don’t have something for specific gravity. I’m working on that. If I can’t identify something complex, which is too often the case, I send it on for lab results. I’m not a know-it-all, I am trying to be a know-it-all.

As a footnote, I’ve quit that group. This is the second major rock related group I have quit in the last year. If you think I can help you, give me an e-mail. I may not have the right answer but I will try to help. Without insulting you.



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The Drill

The Drill. Checking my recent road trip finds with my Geiger counter, handheld metal detector, and my two UV lamps. Just to see if anything else is going on besides the reasons I originally picked them up.

One piece under shortwave fluoresces a nice green. May have found some common opal. This was on my last stop, when I pulled off the highway on a whim to walk the desert floor. At first I thought it was an agate because one side displays a translucent quality along with a wavy banding. When I got home, though, with my tools, I remembered I had seen something like it.

That piece matches the color, luster and the fluorescence of Arizona opal I recently got in trade from rock and mineral dealer Rolf Luetcke. Although simply white, the rock comes alive under shortwave UV. Not the intensity or brightness of Rolf’s piece, that material is top-notch, but the exact same color under the lamp.

Update: Not opal. A steel nail doesn’t scratch it, but a nail scratches the opal Rolf supplied. The piece must be chalcedony or agate, or whatever you want to call cryptocrystalline quartz. Hmm. What are the odds that I would find something that looks exactly like something else and fluoresces just like it as well. At least I know a place to search for fluorescent agates. The agates I have don’t fluoresce, certainly nothing green.