Treasure Hunting

I was reading some other material today and came across this link for EarthExplorer at the USGS site.  I haven’t had much time to play around with it, yet, but this looks like a really cool website.  You can search for satellite images and aerial photography contained in the United States Geological database all the way back to 1940.  If you do find an image that you want a copy of, there is a fee involved - the fee structure is explained here.

You can obtain free digital topography maps from the USGS, though, and they have several other items of interest.  This is a great source if you’re planning a rock-hunting trip, or even if you’re just heading out into a fairly remote area.  The science of mapmaking sure has changed over the last century!

It’s been a busy week for me, and I haven’t had hardly any time to work on any of my “rock projects”.  I should have switched out the crystals that I’ve been tumbling, but I haven’t even had time for that.  I’m going to have to make sure to allot some time for that today or I’ll end up grinding them to bits.

I don’t have any new pictures, but I still wanted to post a picture today!  So I decided that I would show off this piece of desert jasper that I photographed awhile back.  It’s a specimen from Madagascar that has some very beautiful color combinations.  I have quite a few more of this type that I plan to photograph when I get a little bit of extra time.

The cold weather snuck up on me a bit this year.  We’ve been having gorgeous days here for the last couple of weeks, but this weekend the temperatures started to fall at night.  Right now, it’s about 40 degrees Fahrenheit, but I am refusing to turn on the heat since it should get up to 70 or 80 today as summer tries to make its last stand.  That’s autumn weather in the desert mountains for you.  The snow could arrive anytime now.

I decided to go ahead and post one of the photos I took of the African picture jasper a couple of days ago when I was photographing the ocean jasper.  I love the markings on these pieces, and I think that whoever decided to name it “picture jasper” should get a naming award.  Each stone of this type does seem to have its own story to tell through its markings.  It reminds me a lot of ancient writings that have been found on cave walls.  This particular one brings images of a burning desert to my mind.

The batch of jasper that I have been polishing finally finished up its last cycle in the rock tumbler this weekend.  Although there were three kinds of jasper in that group, I am just going to show pictures of the ocean jasper today.  

Not all of the pieces in this batch had the characteristic orbicular markings of ocean jasper, but most of the ones had a least a few orbs.  I am especially fond of the ones with the darker green tones because I like that color and it seems more “oceanic” to me.

The presence of the orbs does make the stone a bit more difficult to polish since the orbs are often small indentations in the stone.  These tiny pits can make the surface not as smooth as I would like in terms of touch, but I plan to do some more experimenting to see how to compensate for that factor.

Though the stone in the above picture doesn’t really have the darker greens that I like present in its coloring, I do like the coral tones.  Plus, there’s a lot to the pattern of this specimen.

The piece of ocean jasper in this last photograph really doesn’t have much of an orbicular pattern, but it is one of my favorites of the lot.  It has a nice shape and I love the seafoam-like pattern of the stone.

Several days ago I mentioned how plentiful and inexpensive Montana moss agate is, but these things don’t take away from the fact that this type of agate can be a beautiful stone and that it has a personality all its own.

I decided to try to capture some of the uniqueness of one particular piece of Montana moss agate in a digital drawing.  The particular specimen that the drawing was modeled on is very “earthy” looking with some gold tones in the translucent center.

Today I hope to get some photographs taken of a newer batch of ocean jasper that I recently acquired.  This latest sampling actually has some nice translucent samples as well.  Yes, even though it’s called ocean jasper, a lot of it is quite translucent like agate.  From what I have read, there was some discussion on whether to classify it as an agate or a jasper, but the name ocean jasper won out because of the orbicular patterns that are found on many of the specimens.  If you want to read up some more on this, check out this information.

I’m sure there must just be tons of people out there wondering what rough Labradorite from Madagascar looks like.  Well, maybe there aren’t.  Regardless, I’m posting a picture of it because I’ve been on a “blue” kick lately.

The labradorite in this photo may look pretty opaque, but there are a few pieces that should polish up to show a nice bit of iridescence.  Right now, it just sort of looks like … well, rock - rock in a pretty shade of blue.  I’ll have to compare it to this picture in a few months when it’s all nicely polished and stuff.

Speaking of polishing, the jasper that I’ve been talking about on and off has finally moved on to the polishing cycle.  I’m using a very fine grain aluminum oxide for this last cycle - nothing fancy at all, just the basic polish grit.  I’m glad that no one else was around today when I was getting all the gunk cleaned off of the rocks from the last cycle in the tumbler.  I had to yell out several times begging the cats not to drink the filthy “rock water”.  I wish someone would explain to me why dirty water is so much more attractive to them than nice, fresh water.  More taste?  Or is it the texture?  Maybe, they just think it’s fancy mineral water.  Oh well, I guess it sorta is.  That’s what I really should have taken a picture of and posted - Pipper with her head shoved in a bowl of gunky, dirty rock water and having the best time of her life.

If you’re sick of looking at pictures of agate, you might want to go get a snack instead of reading this post.  I’m wanting a bit of a snack myself but since I can eat and type at the same time, I’m good to go.

The agate pictured here is a type of banded agate from Africa known as Blue Lace Agate.  It has some similar colorings of the Blue-Gray Agate from Brazil, but they are much lighter in tone due to all of the white mixed in with the blues.  A few of the pieces, like the one in the photograph below even have some additional pastel-like bands included with the standard blue and white colorings.

Blue Lace Agate typically runs at the higher end of the Mohs hardness scale for agate.  The stones in this batch are a bit higher than a 7, maybe a 7.5.  I haven’t decided what I want to do with this batch yet.  There are a couple of pieces in there that I’d like to polish, but I think that I may end up using most of them in a candle centerpiece with a winter theme.  Even though the stones come from Africa, they make me think of winter when I look at them with the crisp blue and white colors.  Of course, since I have so many projects going on currently, the stones are just sitting in a box in the corner right now.  Those boxes in the corner are really starting to stack up.