Fun with Fluorescence!

[MissyBeaucoup]

OK, so this is a fun little game to play with your colored gemstones. All you need is a camera and a loupe with a UV light. (I got mine inexpensively on Etsy from FDJtools in Florida.) What is fun is that stones colored with chromium will fluoresce red, but if they have very much iron (like blue sapphire), the iron will block the fluorescence. Maybe somebody can explain it better than me! Anyway, the Mahenge spinels fluoresce really strongly and so does ruby, like in the center of my avatar ring. The demantoid garnets don't fluoresce. Feel free to post your own favorites too!!

 

[MissyBeaucoup]

Here's a few more experiments:

Weird orange fluorescence of Merelani mint garnet.

Light blue Montana sapphire fluorescing a weak red. Cornflower blue sapphire, with more iron, didn't fluoresce.

Lavender sapphire pops up nice and bright. Wonder what this says about its chromaphores? You can also see a diamond sidestone shining bluer than the others on the left.

Have fun, and please do post your own--both the ones that fluoresce and the ones that don't!

 

[Arkteia]

Awesome!

 

[Rare gem lover]

How cool! I love this thread!!

 

[MissyBeaucoup]

Sharing a photo of my new Tajik spinel from Gene (wowza!) and my spessartite garnet (weakly fluorescent if at all)...in the hopes I can convince somebody else to come out and play!

Have a fun weekend, y'all!

 

[voce]

I don't have UV light, nor do I know how to take pictures like you did with one.

 

[Arcadian]

I knew I had some...lol All Spinels.

 

[MissyBeaucoup]

I have a very low tech system. I have a cheap loupe with a UV light, kind of like this one: https://etsy.me/2Ng55G4. It was under $20. I put my camera lens right up against the loupe and shot the pictures. I held each ring on a black pencil laid on top of a fuzzy bath mat. It’s the fuzzy bath mat that gives that “studio” quality!

Thank you, Arcadian! Wow...the spinels really pop!

 

[voce]

Thanks @MissyBeaucoup I just ordered that loupe! I will play sometime in the future.

 

[leslie1956]

I need a loupe, too, so thanks from me as well @MissyBeaucoup I've noticed this cool effect with UV light at my manicurist. My pink spinel eternity ring glows like crazy!

 

[OreoRosies86]

Spinels are awesome for fluorescence.

 

[elle_71125]

I was on vacation and missed this thread. I will definitely come back to play.

I love the weird orange florescence on your mint garnet. Very cool!

 

[elle_71125]

Clearly, your set up worked far better than mine. I found this to be quite the test of my patience. I have a UV pen but I couldn’t get the camera to show what my eye was seeing. It kept doing this weird red haze. So I bought a loupe with a up light right in it but found out that the light wasn’t strong enough. Sigh...

Anyway, I took a combination of pics. Some with the loupe and some with the uv pen. It was really interesting to see what colors showed up and how things could change based on the lighting. Very cool project overall.

My Merelani mint garnet showed up as a bright peachy pink. Plus there’s one very fluorescent diamond in there.


My cobalt spinel ring was actually really cool. Several of them shifter to pink. Way stronger than this pic showed. The big one was really pink.


This one was a total surprise for me. This is my purple sapphire ring.


Big Blue didn’t do a thing...and I’m alright with that.


My pink spinel from @arkieb1 shows bright red.

Same for my big mahenge from Caysie at CvB.


My teal tourmaline ring did nothing (but there were a couple fluorescent diamonds on there.

Here’s my paraiba with a pink spinel halo. Nothing really happens to the paraiba but the spinel light right up.


I’m annoyed I couldn’t get this one right. This is a pink tourmaline center and two mint garnet sides. The pink tourmaline looked grayish and the mint sides were a bright peachy pink.

Nothing to see on my paraiba ring. A few diamonds in the halo were fluorescent but it didn’t show too well in this picture.

 

[elle_71125]

And the last two...

Here’s my demantoid from Yvonne. The demantoid actually showed up kind of brown yellow but just looks black in my picture. The sides are pinky purple sapphires.


Here’s my purple garnet from Jeff White. It looked grey under the UV light but I had a surprise in store...


The sides had some fluorescent diamonds in play. The very top diamond shows as a pretty pink. It didn’t want to show up in the pics but this was the best one I managed. Ive never seen a diamond fluoresce pink before so that was cool!

 

[MissyBeaucoup]

Thanks @MissyBeaucoup I just ordered that loupe! I will play sometime in the future.

Yay! I’m looking forward to your pictures, @voce !

I need a loupe, too, so thanks from me as well @MissyBeaucoup I've noticed this cool effect with UV light at my manicurist. My pink spinel eternity ring glows like crazy!

Wow—I never thought of that! I was in the produce aisle looking at kale and noticed my pink sapphire was glowing like crazy. I don’t know what kind of lights they are using on those vegetables, but it made me smile! I hope you can snag a picture of your eternity ring next time, Leslie.

Spinels are awesome for fluorescence.

Yes, the spinels are so impressive! @Arcadian you’ve got an amazing collection! I’m wondering—for those who have blue or gray or purple ones—if you get the same effect as the pinks.

I was on vacation and missed this thread. I will definitely come back to play.

I love the weird orange florescence on your mint garnet. Very cool!

We’re glad you got a vacation, Elle! When you get rested up, come back out and play!

I hope the folks with garnets can find some other weird ones. That orange was a strange surprise!

 

[MissyBeaucoup]

Hi, Elle! You just beat me to post your pictures. What neat effects you got!!

Who would ever dream that those cobalt spinels would fluoresce so bright! The peachy pink color of the Merelani mint is a big surprise too! And that demantoid daisy ring is so much fun to look at.

Thanks so much for sharing!!

 

[arkieb1]

Some Burmese spinel;

 

[chatoyancy]

Some Burmese spinel;

Those look like they are actually on fire.

 

[leslie1956]

Those look like they are actually on fire.

They remind me of embers glowing on a campfire

 

[ohsomethingshiny]

Some Burmese spinel;

Hot lava!

 

[SparkliesLuver]

Some Burmese spinel;

I'll forever love these pictures of yours. Such awesome material!

 

[MissyBeaucoup]

Some Burmese spinel;

Wow! The fire within the rock!

Thanks for posting these amazing pics, @arkieb1 !

 

[voce]

I was actually pretty disappointed. Not many of my stones showed fluorescence. The first one was an unheated ruby from Precision Gem, albeit it was one that Gene cut from rough with both blue and red, so probably the iron covered up the fluorescence.

Then, here are my melee rubies from Yvonne. I was a little pleased to be able to spot the chalkiness that comes from heat treatment Richard Hughes wrote of. Not too much fluorescence here since the chalkiness from the heat treatment covers it up.

Next up was my ruby e-ring, which I hoped would not show chalkiness since it was sold as untreated. This picture was dubious and not very flattering, as it showed a color zone with no fluorescence, and the inclusions were very visible.

Then I wondered, is that chalkiness in the bottom right corner? I hope not, but best to check for sure. A side shot from the right gave me relief. No chalkiness, just a trick of the light, whew.

No chalkiness either from my unheated sapphire, though I don't know if it appears completely inert.

It irked me that out of 32 little diamonds in my e-ring, just ONE fluoresced blue. Under normal light the diamonds look perfect, but under UV the fluorescent one looked mismatched, stuck out like a sore thumb! But then, I came here and saw that it's pretty normal to have a few fluorescent diamonds when it comes to halo rings. Jewelers don't check the little guys for fluorescence when they set them.

But man did those Mahenge spinels glow! Well, all except for one of them. It stuck out as well.

Finally, it looked like all 3 of my little star sapphires were relatively weakly fluorescent. The black one just doesn't show it well on camera.

 

[MissyBeaucoup]

@voce You got such interesting results! I love your ruby e-ring! And the star sapphires have such a mysterious glow!

It was just as strange to me in my own experiment that some things you’d expect to fluoresce don’t. The idea that you could have enough iron hiding unseen but still blocking those wavelengths is pretty cool.

Thanks so much for all the fun photos!

 

[voce]

Holley blue agate looks fluorescent. If it's not bright red it's because the red has to come out through the perinwinkle blue material!

New pink star sapphire (top) looks fluorscent, more so than the purplish red star sapphire on the right there.

Lastly, Burmese spinel melee in my chrysoberyl ring are more brightly fluorescent than my ruby.

 

[MissyBeaucoup]

@voce Thanks for the pictures! I wouldn’t have thought the blue agate would fluoresce pink. What a neat effect!

And those Burmese spinel are striking! How pretty! The ruby glows, but the spinel look like hot embers. Wow!

 

[MissyBeaucoup]

@Nosean Let us see your pretty colored diamond!

Does anyone have new purchases to share?

 

[Nosean]

View attachment 678090

The 0,47 ct Fancy intense blue-green together with a 0,15 ct Fancy vivid green-yellow.
The vivid green-yellow has a strong daylight and LED fluorescence.

Both are natural untreated and have a GIA report.

 

[Nosean]

 

[MissyBeaucoup]

Bumping up this thread for @Rubybrick , who is considering a pretty ruby today.

Does anyone have any new stones or photos to share? I am especially curious about your sapphires in the continuum of purple toward ruby, especially of African origin. Usually the blue iron chromaphore will quench any fluorescence so blue sapphires won’t fluoresce and pink ones will.

How interesting!