I was at the Royal Peacock Opal mine this weekend and found something. It looks like a huge oyster filled to the brim with white opal. The colors are red, purple, green and maybe more as I stoped polishing when I just started to get color. The whole piece weighs 5.2 oz wet. Its sitting in petrified wood. The back shows blue glass through cracks in the wood. There is a small window in the wood on the upper side of the piece and shows a white-blue tint. I think the peace changes color from white to blue glass. The real kicker is when I turn on the short wave UV light. The oyster changes into a fluorescent green swirling smoke monster eye. Honestly that is exactly what it looks like. It scared me when I turned on the UV. Goosebumps. Does anyone have any thoughts? Radioactive?I hope the photos show well.
Just as a heads up I am going to move this to the Collector's Corner section later, since this is certainly not a forum announcement. Yup, that's some classic opal there, and a very nice specimen. Iirc some percentage out of there is stable but much will craze when it dries. The green fluorescence is from trace uranium content which is very common in fossils. It's probably not super radioactive but it can be a concern in enclosed rooms with large numbers of particularly hot fossils (ie university dino bone collections).
Fluorescence is very common in Opal. In fact this property is often used in Opal mining to identify and separate out the opal when mining. Don't worry about it.
To me it looks like the color flashes follow the intensity of the fluorescents. I may have to peek into the back under the wood. That whole back side may be clear blue glass. At least that’s what shows between the cracks in the wood.
Would it be worth opening the back of the piece to uncover what may be blue glass? It looks like half way through the piece the matter changes from milky white to clear blue. I added a zoomed picture of one of the blue glass cracks on the bottom.
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Joined: Mon Oct 06, 2008 6:13 pm Posts: 5077 Location: Australia
my 5 cents worth. Leave as is. The wood is probably acting a bit like a doublet backing and possibly holding it all together for now. While it's a white base, you have captured pretty colours already facing which is nicer than blue glass without play...IMO.
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