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Rock Collecting at Night

9/26/2024

3 Comments

 
Picture
Picture
​By Brian Bondy
Images courtesy of Jim J and BD Bondy
​
Why, you might ask, would you want to go rock collecting in the dark. Because we were looking for rocks that fluoresce.

Last night Carol and I and our friends Jim & Nada went for a pic-nic dinner past La Madera, towards Petaca. We stopped at the side of the road and had dinner, waited for the sun to set, and then went down the hillside to look for rocks. Some rocks you can see in the light are interesting, small geodes with crystals inside, or a banded quartz rock that is pretty.

Some rocks though, don’t look particularly interesting during the day, but under UV light, they fluoresce brightly, fiery reds, yellows and purples. Some can be quite beautiful, spectacular even, under the right light.
Picture
Picture
We had special black light flashlights, and we walked around in the dark shining our UV lights on the ground. Some rocks really light up well, and Jim’s light was a different wavelength than mine. Jim’s light was fantastic and lit up some of the rocks as if they had a fire inside them. We spent about about 45 minutes looking around that area before moving to another hillside along the road.

This time the hillside went up. Shining the flashlights on the hillside lit up some bright veins of calcite in the wall. On the ground were some wonderfully bright pieces that lit up yellow, white and blue. While walking along the road something different lit up brightly.
Picture
Scorpion Picture

It looks ominous, but it was pretty small, only about an inch long, but plain as can be. I knew scorpions fluoresced as I was in an Ace Hardware in Phoenix several years back and they were selling UV flashlight for that purpose. They even had a tank with a couple of scorpions inside that you could try the flashlights out.
​
After about a half hour at this site it was time to go home. On the way back we wondered at every hillside and road cut, what a UV flashlight would show. I can’t wait to go out again. 
3 Comments
Sara Wright
9/27/2024 07:23:43 am

I really enjoyed this article Brian... I have done the same thing around here with mushrooms - some bioluminesce and can ve seen with he naked eye... Gosh, I never thought about rocks! very very cool.

Reply
Lauren Cottrell Banner
9/27/2024 11:16:51 am

Can I come hunting with you next time? 😁 Sound like fun. I, like so many others around here are “rock people”. You’ll know us when you come to our homes. There are random piles of rocks in the yard, house and even in our pockets. Our partners will tell you going with a walk with us is an endless stop and start as we admire even the most humble of rocks along the way.
These sound exciting, glowing rocks wow. A new level of interest.

Reply
Janice Quinn
10/4/2024 08:47:39 am

I wanna play too!! There’s a ton of UV flashlights out there. Can you recommend any? And specs on your friend’s flashlight that was better than yours? Please! And what about leading a couple of nighttime tours, eh?? Gracias!

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