Celestine

Item Description

What a lovely miniature specimen from this classic locality in Poland. Several sharp, rather gemmy, lustrous prismatic crystals of Celestine are intergrown to create a showy display specimen. The color ranges from a beautiful misty blue color in the center to more of a pale smoky hue towards the edges. I can see one TINY little ding on one of the corners of the terminations, but otherwise the piece is in great shape. Fine quality crystals with beautiful form and color.
From the collection of Armon McPherson, a retired physicist, now living in New Mexico. Armon received his PhD from North Carolina State University in 1985, and worked at the laser laboratory at the University of Illinois at Circle Center. In the summer of 1997, Armon moved to the Argonne National Laboratory where he worked at the Advanced Photon Source, then the world’s largest synchrotron facility dedicated as an x-ray source. In 2001, he was asked to join a team at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque to conduct laser research for DARPA. Finally, staying within Sandia, he transferred to the Z Facility, the world’s most powerful x-ray facility. He retired in the spring of 2017. Armon's introduction to mineral collecting came in the 1980s during graduate school when he attended his first mineral show. He took up the hobby of faceting gems, and focused his early collection on gem crystals, and later transitioned into collecting non-gem species. We are proud to offer specimens from his worldwide mineral collection here for you.