~~Tunnel Vision~~ Light, No, It's Sable, at The End of The Tunnel

Photo by Cecily with her iPhone camera.
IMG_1400_2

Sable The Cat adopted us after she was abandoned. She has a chip in her ear. now she is my son's cat... Very good natured. Loves the family...

I built the stone bench a few years ago out of a copper bearing rock. The rock is Chrysocolla, as identified by Derek, a University of Arizona Geologist friend of my youngest son.

Samples from Asarco mines in Sahuarita, near Tucson are an almost perfect match to our copper rocks. Here is a Flickr photo of a huge specimen of chrysocolla on the ASARCO copper mine grounds, Sahuarita, AZ. I got ours at a rock and gravel company in Tucson. From time to time, they get tailings from the Asarko mines..
www.flickr.com/photos/expknitter/3817822493/

Chrysocolla (hydrated copper silicate) is a mineral, (Cu,Al)2H2Si2O5(OH)4·nH2O. It is of secondary origin and forms in the oxidation zones of copper ore bodies. Associated minerals are quartz, limonite, azurite, malachite, cuprite, and other secondary copper minerals.

Chrysocolla has an attractive blue-green colour and is a minor ore of copper, having a hardness of 2.5 to 3.5. It is also used as an ornamental stone. It is typically found as glassy botryoidal or rounded masses and crusts, or vein fillings. Because of its light color, it is sometimes confused with turquoise. Commonly it occurs only as pourous crusts unsuitable for gem use, but high quality, gem grade chrysocolla can be translucent and is highly prized.

The name comes from the Greek chrysos, "gold", and kolla, "glue", in allusion to the name of the material used to solder gold, and was first used by Theophrastus in 315 BCE.
www.mindat.org/min-1040.html

Notable occurrences include Israel, Democratic Republic of Congo, Chile, Cornwall in England, and Arizona, Utah, New Mexico and Pennsylvania in the United States.
www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Chrysocolla
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Chrysocolla is a hydrous copper silicate with the formula (Cu,Al)2H2Si2O5(OH)4·nH2O, found around the edges of copper deposits. Where you see bright blue-green chrysocolla , you'll know that copper is nearby.

Chrysocolla is a hydroxylated copper silicate mineral that forms in the alteration zone around the edges of copper ore bodies. It almost always occurs in the amorphous, noncrystalline form shown here.

This specimen has an abundance of chrysocolla coating the grains of a breccia. The picture doesn't really do justice to the color, which is close to that of turquoise. Real turquoise is much harder (Mohs hardness 6) than chrysocolla (hardness 2 to 4), but sometimes the softer mineral is passed off as turquoise.

geology.about.com/od/minerals/ig/silicates/minpicchrysoco...

Here is a collection of Flickr photos of Chrysocolla specimens.

www.flickr.com/search/groups/?q=Chrysocolla&w=2997545...

Huge specimen of chrysocolla on the ASARCO copper mine grounds, Sahuarita, AZ. near Tucson.
www.flickr.com/photos/expknitter/3817822493/

Another good reference page with lots of more detailed information:
www.mindat.org/min-1040.html

To see some of the finest copper mineral specimens ever found, be sure to visit the University of Arizona's Mineral Collection at Flandrau Science Center or at the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum. To get a first hand look at how copper is mined, plan to visit Asarco Mineral Discovery Center.

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Taken on: June 11, 2010

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Camera: Apple iPhone 3G, f/2.8 (more info) (hide info)

Camera:	Apple iPhone 3G
Aperture:	f/2.8
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Exposure Program:	Program AE
Metering Mode:	Average
Color Space:	sRGB
Software:	QuickTime 7.6.6
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