Detailed information
Dimensions
70 x 54 x 38
mm
Locality
Špania Dolina (Herrengrund) Banská Bystrica County Slovakia
Condition
No recorded repairs
Well-formed prismatic crystals of white Aragonite from Špania Dolina in Banská Bystrica County, Slovakia, a classic old-time locality. The hydrothermal mineralisation at this site has been mined for over 1,000 years, principally for Chalcopyrite, Siderite and Tetrahedrite. This rather delightful Aragonite forms a radiating, fan-like array of divergent, translucent, pseudo-hexagonal prisms of a colourless to milky white to 3 cm tall, with flat pinacoid terminations. The display face is tinted a lovely patchy lemon yellow, formed from inclusions of what is thought to be an iron oxide (although not confirmed) within the Aragonite. The yellow colouration is a characteristic feature of many Aragonite specimens from this locality. Under LWUV, the upper parts of the prisms, just below and including the terminations, appear to fluoresce a dull and somewhat ethereal brownish red. This may be a result of reflected visible light from the lower frequency-range of the ultraviolet source I am using, yet I do suspect it more a true UV property of the Aragonite and not an artifact.