Optical phenoma beryls

[rocks2dust]

Anyone else have pics of beryls with optical phenomena they've collected. I have a couple at hand, and others I probably should shoot if I can find them (it's funny, but sad, that the more I get my collection narrowed down and organized, the more difficult it is for me to find anything):

Black beryl (cat's eye)


Sunstone beryl (schiller)

[PinkDiamond]

I'll have to see what I can find and shoot some pics. Hope others have some to share with us, too. Cool idea.

[rocks2dust]

I hope that others will post some pics, too. I'm not yet finding the pieces I was thinking of posting, but came across a few in the process of searching. Unfortunately, the chatoyance comes out muted in the camera, which may have to do with the UV filter I use to cut down on excessive reflections, so these are just quick pics:

goshenite (cat's eye)


aquamarine (cat's eye)


emerald (point-of-light with weak star)


If I can find the others, I may have to try taking off the filter.

[Rockranger1]

Is the Sunstone from Africa? Looks similar to the copper included ones. I cabbed one up and it just never appealed to me. The one in your pic looks much better facet cut then my cab.

[PinkDiamond]

I had an African sunstone that gemaddicts sent me, and put it under the new Meiji microscope right after I got it, and I was trying out the scope cam I got from Kerensky to capture some of the platelet inclusions, and although I'm having difficulty mastering the focus on the scope cam, I did manage to get a few shots I'll post for you. I need to try it again and see if I can do better.

[rocks2dust]

Is the Sunstone from Africa? Looks similar to the copper included ones. I cabbed one up and it just never appealed to me. The one in your pic looks much better facet cut then my cab.

I'm fairly certain this one was from one of the Minas Gerais locales in Brazil (I've seen examples from Padre Paraiso that look like the one in my photo above, and also some goethite-included that gave some sunstone-like flashes from Coronel Murta). I have a couple more somewhere that I recall being from Brazil and/or possibly Madagascar. I haven't personally seen any of the Nigerian beryl with platelets.

[rocks2dust]

I still haven't come across the pieces I was going to photo, but here are a few more photos, including a different goshenite with more obvious tubes and a different sunstone beryl:

heliodor (cat's eye)


goshenite (cat's eye)


sunstone beryl (schiller)


Unlike the browner beryl in the first post, the base color of this sunstone seems to be a very pale aqua, and likely also Brazil (or so I was told). Though they have needles (probably hematite), what chiefly gives off the schiller color in the beryl sunstones I have seem to be disordered platelets (the inclusions can be goethite, hematite, ilmenite and/or other minerals) more like the "Confetti" oligoclase sunstones than the coppery lamellae of Oregon labradorite sunstone. Interesting, but these little mysteries pale beside the question, "Why are some women named 'Beryl', yet you never meet one named "Aquamarine"

[Rockranger1]

This is the one African I cabbed.

[rocks2dust]

That's really has big flashes of color & looks great to me!