Rocks that ROCK!

Introducing a month long exploration of natural wonders seen by a woman who always has a camera on hand. We begin exploring with the wonders of minerals.

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"Velvet Beauty" is a magnificent collector's specimen from Bisbee, Arizona. This museum-quality piece of malachite and azurite was available for purchase at a rock and gem show for a mere $25,000. See a higher resolution image here.

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A titanium wash over a piece of quartz crystal is heat-treated to produce great color and flash. Seen on display with a vendor at the world-famous Quartzite, Arizona Rock and Gems show. Higher resolution image here.

Most of my rockhounding these days is manifested in collecting images of great rock and minerals, such as this amazing specimen of pyrite crusted on the bevel edges of these cubes of calcite from China, seen at the Tucson Rock and Gem Show.

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More like this

The lure of minerals is irrepressible when one sees fine crystals on display. This post is the first of four in a row featuring crystals seen at rock and gem shows in Arizona. The Tucson Rock and Gem Show is one of the oldest and largest of all such shows, with famed international reputation.…
The Natural History Museum of LA County has its share of gems. A whole room of them, in fact. Hundreds of rubies, topaz, opals, obscure formations of marvelous multi-colored rocks and minerals -- even asteroids -- a veritable pageant of dramatically lit geological psychedelia. There are gems on…
When you peer into a fractal, you're seeing the edge of chaos. If you sift through enough Julia or Mandelbrot sets, you might catch a hint of fractal fever. When you find that point, where order is filtered out of randomness, and glimpse a familiar pattern, you might feel tempted to shout "Eureka…
While I was away, the rest of the geoblogosphere spent some time creating a list of 50 minerals to see before you die, and then ticking off which ones they've done; Dave Schumaker put together a neat tag cloud to display the results. Intimidated by the length of this list, Callan, Kim, EffJot,…

They look exactly like star nebula formation photographs taken at a very close proximity â¦

⦠and all 3 mug shits look a bit alien looking â¦

... ... B Jefferson Bolender even has a tripod attachment - can you get any more Martian?

By Wallace Turner (not verified) on 29 Jun 2009 #permalink

ibviously (sic) I'm typing in the dark here on an old fashioned macbook without the lightly up keys ...

The reference to mug-shots was changed by MS Orifice without any due diligence on my part.

By Wallace turner (not verified) on 29 Jun 2009 #permalink

At least I didn't make this mistake in Greg Laden's blog (which is where I thought I was commenting) ...

By wallace turner (not verified) on 29 Jun 2009 #permalink

You made me laugh, Wallace! I am in an alien landscape for sure in that "mug shot". It is the Imperial Sand Dunes in southwestern California. You comment on my tripod - ironically, most of the images I will be sharing were shot handheld with point and shoot cameras.

Perhaps if anyone wonders about my nick of cobalt123, I am known on flickr.com as both cobalt and cobalt123. I encourage anyone who likes the photos I am posting to look at them in the very large view there.

Wonderful!

By Skeptigal (not verified) on 04 Jul 2009 #permalink