Clinohumite (great color)

Item Description

This piece is from a find in the early 2000s which produced these beautiful and fine quality Clinohumites. This mineral is known from only a handful of world localities in fine quality crystals. Typically, Clinohumite has an orange color, but these Afghani pieces have show very impressive RED color. This piece features a good quality, fairly sharp, well-formed, gemmy (when backlit), RED color monoclinic crystal of Clinohumite measuring 1.3 cm from this contemporary discovery. If you're a fan of Afghani minerals, a gem crystal collector, or a collector of rare silicates, do not pass up this beautiful specimen. Good quality all around.
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.