Celestine var: Barium-rich Celestine (rare locality specimen)

Item Description

A very attractive and rather rare display specimen of Barium-rich Celestine (labeled as Barytocelestine) from the famous Machow Mine in Poland. The piece features gorgeous, soft golden colored crystallized "sprays" comprising, sharp, lustrous, translucent, thin prismatic crystals, associated with powdery-yellow colored Sulfur underneath. Individual crystals were difficult to measure, but they are up to about 9 mm long. The piece is in remarkably good condition, with no major damage I can find on the top/display side. A fine showy piece of this rare variety of Celestine.
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.