• Slowy@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Ok I took some mediocre photos of the sand with this cheap digital microscope, it looks very nice. Can you tell anything about it?

    magnifyed pink sand on a glass slide

    magnifyed pink sand on a glass slide

    • weariedfae@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Awesome photos!

      Whoa you were not kidding about that being pink. Holy cow. I mean…the pink grains could potentially be garnet but I’m a little doubtful and unsteady at saying that for sure. They have conchoidal fracture and a vitreous sheen which could easily be quartz, perhaps stained by something else going on in the area (Mn? > Fe).

      Those blue green grains are fricken neato, I don’t have a good explanation for them and can’t really get a good look from the photos.

      I see a couple of green grains that could be epidote or some other green mineral, and one that looks a little olivine-esque but it’s hard to tell.

      It’s one of those things that you poke and prod and rotate and stare at for a while before giving a broad, hand wavy guess.

      It would probably be helpful to look up the location and the formation to get a better sense of what to expect.

      Either way, those are dope!