I found this to be an interesting tidbit from the Color Stone Newsletter’s ‘mystery gem game’; is it a mis-mash or astronomy phenomenon? To find out more, read on……
Suddenly gems with multiple personalities are becoming all the rage and gemologists are as baffled by their identities as psychologists might be by patients with multiple personalities. This gem displays evidence of at least eight distinct mineral strains in its complex makeup. What is this gem’s marketing name, and why are we featuring it? Here’s a clue: study the picture of the gem and determine what sky-watcher’s phenomenon it reminds you of.
If you’re familiar with astronomy, you’ll notice a more than subjective resemblance between the black body color and orb-covered patterned surface of this gem and what are known as spiral nebulae. Hence the stone was named "nebula stone" by its discoverers Karen and Ron Nurnberg, who lucked upon it during a camping trip in southern
Mexico in 1994. To this day, theirs is the only known deposit of this ornamental rock. So don’t ask them for directions to the mining site. We had to beg for the vague locality information contained here. Of course, you’re wondering about the stone’s gemological identity. Well, so are the mineralogists who have studied the stone and found traces of quartz, four feldspars (riebeckite, arfedsonite, anorthoclase and aegirine), acmite, calcite and zircon. No wonder an undecided classification debate is on for this gem. Is it, like unakite, a partial feldspar that acts as a kind of foster father for this material? We thought so, and decided to use it as a poster child for the very strange alkali branch of the feldspar family—a huge, sprawling gem group.
Reprinted from Colored Stones Newsletter
Suddenly gems with multiple personalities are becoming all the rage and gemologists are as baffled by their identities as psychologists might be by patients with multiple personalities. This gem displays evidence of at least eight distinct mineral strains in its complex makeup. What is this gem’s marketing name, and why are we featuring it? Here’s a clue: study the picture of the gem and determine what sky-watcher’s phenomenon it reminds you of.If you’re familiar with astronomy, you’ll notice a more than subjective resemblance between the black body color and orb-covered patterned surface of this gem and what are known as spiral nebulae. Hence the stone was named "nebula stone" by its discoverers Karen and Ron Nurnberg, who lucked upon it during a camping trip in southern
Mexico in 1994. To this day, theirs is the only known deposit of this ornamental rock. So don’t ask them for directions to the mining site. We had to beg for the vague locality information contained here. Of course, you’re wondering about the stone’s gemological identity. Well, so are the mineralogists who have studied the stone and found traces of quartz, four feldspars (riebeckite, arfedsonite, anorthoclase and aegirine), acmite, calcite and zircon. No wonder an undecided classification debate is on for this gem. Is it, like unakite, a partial feldspar that acts as a kind of foster father for this material? We thought so, and decided to use it as a poster child for the very strange alkali branch of the feldspar family—a huge, sprawling gem group.Reprinted from Colored Stones Newsletter
