View allAll Photos Tagged OPAL
When you dig holes in the ground all over the landscape you need the danger sign(s) [previous photo]!
Scanned photo.
Locality: Electric Opal Knob Location, Zacatecas, Mexico
Size: Specimen is 1.1 inches tall.
SC2-4215
1X05.00
Gracie and one of her friends chose Opal as the name for this young rescue kitten. Opal is aptly named because she is a real treasure. She totally adapted to being in my house by today and she was thoroughly exploring the place already. However, it was short lived. My foster family is/was ready to take on a couple of kittens so I sent Opal and Friday to go live with them. Friday is only about 2 weeks older than Opal so I felt they would be a good match agewise and they can be spayed around the same time and be coneheads together.
Alice instantly took to Opal and would have been cleaning her in another day or two. Opal wasn't so sure about Alice, but Alice knows how to win kittens over and she was almost there in less than an hour. I have hopes that Alice will be just as agreeable to future kittens as she has been to the ones I have brought her so far. Another treasure, is Alice. With only Tango left, my house is going to seem a lot quieter. I will miss those little guys, until the next ones come along...
Science Olympiad Specimen Set
Canon T6s; MP-E 65mm 1-5x; SWEBO LS-001 Rail
Zerene Stacker; 42 photos
G00036_210205_002x_01OpalFL
Opal Creek waterfall. Most of the Opal Creek hike is along the Little North Santiam River (the merger of Opal Creek and Battle Ax Creek). This beautiful waterfall is beyond Jawbone Flats and is part of Opal Creek proper, before its merger with Battle Ax Creek.
For Macro Monday: This, I love
These are my opal. I bought them in Cooper Pedy (Where most Opals come from.
The little one aren't bought but found in a sand pit, where tourist can "mine" themselves.
They aren't just beautiful, but they remind me of my trip to austalia, which was amazing
Another Australian Boulder Opal--this one more typical. Approximately 6.5cm x 4cm (~4.5cm x 4cm shown).
You might notice a few bubbles. The opals were heating up much too quickly under the photo floodlights, and the fire and color weren't coming up satisfactorly. I started experimenting: one light tent, two, none, in a glass of water, and finally, in a big bowl of water on a submerged platform. This last technique basically works. Just have to watch out for bubbles, and in my house, cat hair.
Images made during my Masterclass Long Exposure at the Opal Coast in France.
Read my blog about this (in Dutch)
I did a tutorial on Faux Boulder Opal from CraftArtEdu. This is the template she used to make the rings. A bit uncomfortable to wear. I like the polymer clay Faux.© Toni Ransfield
Images made during my Masterclass Long Exposure at the Opal Coast in France.
Read my blog about this (in Dutch)
Ethiopian opal beads, about 100 carats. The largest beads are about 10 mm diameter. They're all clear, with brilliant colors from red to violet playing across the beads.
I didn't play around with the colors in this picture, but the contrast is pushed up to make the fabric they were sitting on disappear, so even though the color is bright and beautiful in real life, it isn't quite this electric. Linda bought these at Tucson. Ethiopian opal seems to be getting much more expensive than it was a few years ago. I guess by now people know it isn't going to craze as much as they thought it would. It's still much less expensive than Australian opal, but I think that at its best it's just as beautiful.
5 mm diameter 20-inch strand, and with beautiful color play in every light. I'm not a beader, but I'm going to string these. I thought of putting in some tiny faceted moonstone beads, but on second thought I think these stand alone, and the strand is long enough for a necklace without anything else.
Good strands of opal beads weren't easy to come by in Tucson this year, and most were much more expensive than these. Linda lucked out and found the vendor who sold these on her last day there, and he had five or six left. She'd spent almost all her money on colored sapphires the day before and taken her credit cards as far as she dared, but she had enough left in her pocket to buy two. They weren't on the shopping list I gave her, but she knows my tastes. If she'd called me, I'd have given her my credit card number and asked her to buy him out. Needless to say, Lisa took one look at them and very politely said "mine."
Locality: Virgin Valley, Nevada
Natural History Museum of Los Angeles, Gem and Mineral Hall Collection
Ethiopian opal. Direct sunlight, exposure fusion. The stone is 8 mm on the long axis and is very lively.
The distant hills are lit up by sunrise while the hot water opal pool reflects the fiery skies. Midway geyser, Yellowstone national park
I picked this up off of eBay years ago. I believe it is from Lightning Ridge (Australia's most famous opal area). I'm honestly not sure if this is solely an opal or an opal doublet (opalescent material is bonded to a sturdier base piece) as I don't wear or buy opals as they are quite fragile compared to most gems. This is a 1:1 macro photograph.
Depending on the light source and the angle of the light, the piece would be green or red/amber or yellow. This was the of the few shots where I could get all three colors showing up at the same time.
Images made during my Masterclass Long Exposure at the Opal Coast in France.
Read my blog about this (in Dutch)
Lighting information: one Olympus FL-600R camera right, diffused by Polaroid mini-diffuser. One Olympus FL-300R camera left, undiffused. Both triggered optically by Olympus FL-LM2, on camera, also contributing to the exposure.
See here for an illustration of the lighting setup: flic.kr/p/2n4Thjp
Locality: Electric Opal Knob Location, Zacatecas, Mexico
Size: Specimen is 1.1 inches tall.
SC2-4215
1X05.00
Precious opal ("boulder opal') from Australia. (~5.2 centimeters across at its widest)
A mineral is a naturally-occurring, solid, inorganic, crystalline substance having a fairly definite chemical composition and having fairly definite physical properties. At its simplest, a mineral is a naturally-occurring solid chemical. Currently, there are over 5500 named and described minerals - about 200 of them are common and about 20 of them are very common. Mineral classification is based on anion chemistry. Major categories of minerals are: elements, sulfides, oxides, halides, carbonates, sulfates, phosphates, and silicates.
The silicates are the most abundant and chemically complex group of minerals. All silicates have silica as the basis for their chemistry. "Silica" refers to SiO2 chemistry. The fundamental molecular unit of silica is one small silicon atom surrounded by four large oxygen atoms in the shape of a triangular pyramid - this is the silica tetrahedron - SiO4. Each oxygen atom is shared by two silicon atoms, so only half of the four oxygens "belong" to each silicon. The resulting formula for silica is thus SiO2, not SiO4.
Opal is hydrous silica (SiO2·nH2O). Technically, opal is not a mineral because it lacks a crystalline structure. Opal is supposed to be called a mineraloid. Opal is made up of extremely tiny spheres that can be seen with a scanning electron microscope (SEM).
Gem-quality opal, or precious opal, has a wonderful rainbow play of colors (opalescence). This play of color is the result of light being diffracted by planes of voids between large areas of regularly packed, same-sized opal colloids. Different opalescent colors are produced by colloids of differing sizes. If individual colloids are larger than 140 x 10-6 mm in size, purple & blue & green colors are produced. Once colloids get as large as about 240 x 10-6 mm, red color is seen (Carr et al., 1979).
Not all opals have the famous play of colors, however. Common opal has a wax-like luster & is often milky whitish with no visible color play at all. Opal is moderately hard (H = 5 to 6), has a white streak, and has conchoidal fracture.
Several groups of organisms make skeletons of opaline silica, for example hexactinellid sponges, diatoms, radiolarians, silicoflagellates, and ebridians. Some organisms incorporate opal into their tissues, for example horsetails/scouring rushes and sawgrass. Sometimes, fossils are preserved in opal or precious opal.
Locality: unrecorded locality in Queensland, Australia
----------------
Photo gallery of opal:
www.mindat.org/gallery.php?min=3004
----------------
Reference cited:
Carr et al. (1979) - Andamooka opal fields: the geology of the precious stones field and the results of the subsidised mining program. Geological Survey of South Australia Department of Mines and Energy Report of Investigations 51. 68 pp.
Quick pop up to the Port of Sunderland before work on 16/04/2019 to catch the following 3 that were berthed there.
Sadly the weather was abysmal with low cloud and mist somewhat spoiling the shots, anyway,
Opal 9489479 @ Greenwells Quay
Opal Pool, a few weeks before it erupted. I think I am on record here on Flickr back in June that I would sell a kidney to see Opal erupt. No such luck, but it was fun seeing other people's videos. It certainly didn't seem to erupt from the clear pool you see here.
A slice of opal (flashing blue and green) in a handmade gold and diamond setting that I had made many years ago and I wear with the gold chain. In the background is a small rock with bits of opal showing.
From Queensland, Australia; displayed in the Cranbrook Institute of Science, Oakland County, Michigan.
aka "Opal Pineapple"
Locality: White Cliffs, New South Wales, Australia
From the collection of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles, Gem and Mineral Hall
NHMLA-33174
Images made during my Masterclass Long Exposure at the Opal Coast in France.
Read my blog about this (in Dutch)