OPAL-PORN @opal-porn - Tumblr Blog

truangles

Black opal is the beautifullest rock

funnywildlife

Black Opals

sultanesque

stephendraws

#Opal #white #gems (at Royal Ontario Museum)

#opals #opal

opalauction

Boulder rough specimens from Queensland Australia

tenaflyviper

18 Various Kinds of Opals

When most people think of an opal, they might think of a milky-colored stone containing a rainbow of stripes or flecks inside it. What many people don’t know is that they are incredibly diverse in appearance, and are not actually minerals. Opals are a solid, amorphous form of silica, and are classified as “mineraloids”. Like other mineraloids, such as amber, pearl, and obsidian, they lack structural order, or “crystallinity”.

From the top:

Black Opals

Cat’s Eye Opals

Dendritic Opals

Flamingo Opals

Peruvian Pink Opals

Zebra Opals

Leopard Opals

Yowah Nut and Koroit Opals (both have the same characteristics - they merely come from two different areas).

Brown Opals

Ethiopian Honeycomb Opals

Green Opals (Serbian, Tanzanian, and Brazilian)

Peruvian Blue Opals

Matrix Opals

Landscape Opals (Andean and Australian)

Mexican Fire Opals

Crystal Opals

Australian Boulder Opals

Ethiopian Ribbon Opals

(Side note - the image backgrounds are transparent, except for the matrix/landscape picture, which seems hellbent on being an asshat, no matter how many times I try to fix it)