Best of Connecticut

Wow nice stuff Michael ::o

Michael, those are the best fluorites I have ever seen from CT. Here is one from the Route 25 construction site which I collected in 1976. Can't compare with yours.

How about an elbaite which I collected at the Strickland Quarry in Portland in 1975. Measures 9 mm x 5 mm.

NICE STUFF MICKEY!>:D<

-Rowan Lytle

Necessities:
Food, Water, Shelter, Fire, Minerals.

Stilbite with a dusting of pyrite, Thomaston, Litchfield Co., Connecticut. Measures 8 x 6 x 5 cm.

A small miniature orthoclase specimen I collected from a construction site in downtown Greenwich. This was the best specimen I found. Collected from a calcitic vein in a biotite gneiss. Associated minerals were biotite, calcite, small euhedral yellow to blue-green beryl crystals, and chlorite.

A few years back, I also collected some small (around 5mm) but extremely fine arsenopyrite crystals from an undisclosed Monroe locality. I will post pictures soon. They were found in quartz veins crosscutting a slightly chloritic schist and a porphyritic k-spar and biotite rich granite with very low percent plagioclase. Larger veins were composed of saccharoidal quartz with blebby, mostly subhedral arsenopyrite. Minor secondary mineralization occurred as pale green scorodite crusts and pulvurent bright red carminite (ID still questionable. Analysis pending.)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/10/2011 02:33AM by Jeremy A. Zolan.

Staurolite, glastonbury.....A large twin (crystals are 8 cm)

Not particularly showy, but important to mention- this is a sliced and polished sample of topaz, margarite, and margarodite from Old Mine Park. XRF spectrometry indicated enrichment of Sr with respect to Ca in the micas. A small Rb peak is present. Most of the expected heavy elements in these samples are BDL. There is no W as may be expected in these hydrothermal veins and all of the rocks in Old Mine Park I've analyzed are oddly Sn and Mo free.

Here is a dogtooth calcite that I pryed out of a pocket behind Target.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/05/2011 10:12PM by Adam Berluti.

Good stuff all around! Thanks for posting, everyone!:)

-Rowan Lytle

Necessities:
Food, Water, Shelter, Fire, Minerals.

A twinned staurolite from Glastonbury...possibly the largest found in CT
Also a rubellite from Portland
And a yellow beryl from E.Hampton.

This may be my only specimen from Connecticut. My loss....great specimens everyone.

Almandine in muscovite-staurolite schist, Green's Farm, Roxbury Falls. Large crystal is 2.5x3 cm.




Cheers!

Steve

Hi All

This is a particular CT specimen I am quite proud of right now:

© Tony H Gill

Cheers!

Tony

Oh my gosh Tony! that is incredible! You don't see many Gillette topaz these days, and that is one of the best I've seen!

-Rowan Lytle

Necessities:
Food, Water, Shelter, Fire, Minerals.

::o Wow Tony

Thanks guys :)

Rowan, Great thread! I enjoy seeing at what other Ct.field collectors have found in our state. Mickey, nice Fluorite and really nice Elbaite from
Strickland. Jeremy, Your knowlege of geology is amazing and way over my head. Hope we meet in the field again. Great Ct. specimens everyone and keep them coming.

It's time for a micro. This one is of pyromorphite and wulfenite from the Canton Lead Mines, collected in November of 1976. Wow, that's 35 years ago. Where did the time go? (The wulfenite is 2 mm x 2mm ).

Here is another micro, this one of bertrandite from the Captain Cook Quarry in Newtown, collected in 1978. The bertrandites are around 1.0 mm long. Sorry that the image is fuzzy. I'm shooting with a micro-adapter mounted on a binocular microscope, and the image appears sharp on the LCD, but reproduces fuzzy. I'm new to the microphotography game, but am working on it.

Mickey, Thanks for posting the Captain Cook picture. I think I told you a while ago that my Dad and I enjoyed collecting there ( and battling the giant mosquitos) long ago