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
(со страницы theartreferences)
