Hey guys!
I thought id share this with you all, at my lapidary club's meeting tonight in Uralla i had a member bring his microscope he uses to view all his micro-mount crystals. These involve small specimens of different minerals in rocks that are almost perfectly formed, viewed under a microscope its amazing!
This is of a STIBNITE crystal on quartz that was taken from Hillgrove gold mine, east of Armidale.....they are almost in full swing out there and they pull out some wonderful specimens of crystal whilst mining antimony and gold.
The crystal measures 2mm across, i had to fit my LPI imager to the microscope by removing one of the removable eyepieces and as the microscope eyepiece tube has the same OD as the LPI 1-1/4" adaptor
i was able to "sticky-tape" the imager to the tube!
Stibnite is interesting, I have a nice 8cm or so crystal of it. My daughter's eyes sure opened wide when she saw it for the first time last week. We keep the mineral specimens out of her reach
Very interesting, mate. My third main hobby is minerals.
When I lived in Glen Innes, I had many close locations to fossick, but never managed a trip to Hillgrove....
A fine specimen OBMY, very intricate for it's size. I never thought about using my LPI on my microscope, I shall have to give it a go with my mineral samples as well.
A fine specimen OBMY, very intricate for it's size. I never thought about using my LPI on my microscope, I shall have to give it a go with my mineral samples as well.
Cheers
Ric it is heaps of fun and an excellent way of showing others... My microscopes are not much more than toys ( that is changing soon) but it surprises me how well the lpi works on them.
I have my eye on a binocular microscope with a third tube that houses the camera.. so you can look visually or turn to the screen ...and on the screen you can increase the mag if it will stand it. Well when I get it the skies will clear you can bet on that.
alex
Very interesting, mate. My third main hobby is minerals.
When I lived in Glen Innes, I had many close locations to fossick, but never managed a trip to Hillgrove....
Thanks for the comments guys! It really is fascinating when you see almost perfectly formed crystals like this, when you get larger forms in specimens they become very rare and more expensive, this way it keeps the costs low!
Bobj , unfortunately Straits have taken over Hillgrove and is not open to fossickers anymore, i had a trip out there to fix a crane last month and the processing plant was almost ready to go, then we were told when gold reaches $850 US an ounce they'll put in a much bigger plant!
At the moment they will be processing the old tailings dumps and the dam walls, i was told they assayed it @ 29g/ton!! They found new rich deposits of gold and quartz not more than a foot away when they enlarged the old tunnels......Hillgrove is alive once again!!
They still have the museum there and well worth a look!
The gorge is awesome from Bakers Ck falls lookout!
Very nice specimens of Stibnite come out of this mine!!
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