Fluorescent Museum page 4

Fluorescent Minerals

From New Jersey and Worldwide

Sterling Hill mine beauty that is not too hard, nor expensive to add to your collection. It is wollastonite from the 340 foot level of the Sterling Hill mine. It fluoresces a wonderful orange-yellow color SW. Wollastonite contains calcium, silicon and oxygen. It is a metamorphic mineral, meaning it changed from its original composition, due to the earth's presure and heat, to form this mineral. There are different Franklin wollastonites known as 1st Find, 2nd Find, 3rd Find, Fibrous, and then other wollastonites. 1st Find has large patches of bright wollastonite and often contains willemite or margarosanite. 2nd Find contains hardystonite. 3rd Find contains barite. Wollastonite can be found in different shades of yellow with some appearing orange. Calcite from Mexico (check out the Calcite pages). Pink calcite from San Vincente mine, Boquillas Del Carmen, Coahuila, Mexico. It fluoresces bright pale blue SW, pink LW and also has a long-lasting phospheresence. Here is to tell Mexican calcite from Terlingua calcite: Terlingua cleaves in slight curves (the broken area is not flat) while Mexican calcite cleaves in flat slices (the broken area is flat).

The piece below is a good reason to have both a SW and LW UV lamp. This is an example from the Sterling Hill mine with two veins of sphalerite running through it. Under SW the sphalerite barely fluoresces and shows up as a dark vein. The willemite fluoresces green SW. Under LW, the sphalerite jumps out as fluorescing orange veins.

The pieces below on the left are from Maine and Connecticut. The first is manganoan fluorapatite (unofficially known to collectors and dealers as manganapatite) in feldspar with hyalite from Bennet quarry, Buckfield, Maine. The manganapatite fluoresces yellow SW. The middle piece is manganapatite from Strickland quarry, Portland, Connecticut. The last is manganapatite in feldspar from near Tamminen quarry, Greenwood, Maine. Manganapatite has a similar color to wollastonite and norbergite from New Jersey.

The piece on the right is eucryptite from the Parker Mountain mine, Center Strafford, New Hampshire. Eucryptite fluoresces a wonderful cherry red SW.


Diopside and phlogopite from Pierrepont, New York. Diopside fluoresces bright pale blue SW, phlogopite fluoresces yellow-orange SW.	A matrix of hyalite opal covered in spessertite brown-orange garnets from Le Cheng mine, Guang Dong, China. The hyalite fluoresces bright green SW. It weighs 1.8 oz and is 2.8 x 1.5 x 0.8 inches

A very rare group of minerals from Mont Saint-Hilaire, Quebec, Canada shown under daylight,SW, and LW. Blue carletonite with leucophanite, albite, and leucosphenite. The leucophanite fluoresces lilac purple LW, touches of albite (right and top sides) fluoresce red SW, and leucosphenite is a yellow fluorescing crystal (on the left side and right bottom) SW. The piece weighs 1.5 oz and is 2.3 x 2.0 x 0.8 inches