It will be closest to the Earth during the Tucson Show!

Well it’s not an emerald; but I couldn’t resist such a cool headline! But it is green.

A comet known as C/2022 E3, marked by its bright green nucleus and long faint ion tail, will be on display in the Earth sky in January — possibly for the first time ever or at least for thousands of years.

According to NASA, the newly discovered comet is expected to reach its closest proximity to the sun on Jan. 12. Then, about three weeks later, beginning Feb. 1 (Tucson Time!) the comet is slated to draw nearest to Earth — 26.4 million miles away to be exact. 

The brightness of comets tends to be unpredictable, but this one's current behavior is promising, according to a recent report from Preston Dyches at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Its glow may be visible to the naked eye, though only in dark night skies. Observers with binoculars or telescopes have a greater chance of witnessing the rare speck of light.

More Rarity in the Mineral Specimen World

Just look at this specimen with both an emerald and an aquamarine in the same matrix!

Emerald and aquamarine crystals, separately embedded in a mica schist specimen from Habachtal, in the Austrian Alps. (Courtesy NHM Vienna)

       This was reported on by Pala International in 2012 from a George Bosshart article about color. The late George Boshart was a Gubelin and SSEF Gemologist as well as a spectrometry expert. He died in 2012.

Color Notes for Emeralds from Colombia and Green Icebergs

       The color of emeralds is a fascinating story of geology, chemistry and the mighty influence of tiny amounts of impurities like chromium, vanacium and iron. According to  George Bosshart, the Colombian emerald is blessed with a near-perfect color chemistry: varying concentrations of chromium and vanadium, with very little or no iron. He adds that the dynamic, violent process of geological formation leads to varying concentrations of these trace elements, even within the same mining region. This makes it hard to generalize about the perfect chemistry, except to say that it is the very low (or absent) iron concentrations, rather than the ratio of chromium or vanadium, that make Colombian emeralds ideally colored.

        The color discussion can be continued by an amazing 2022 article from National Geographic called 'Icebergs Can Be Emerald Green.'

Icebergs are most often white-blue objects. But nature is also capable of creating startlingly green icebergs, and they can be found only in Antarctica. Although the scientific literature is full of reports of these emerald ice blocks going back more than a century, no one could explain where they were coming from. Now, a team of researchers may have finally cracked the case.

According to their work, the unusual hue seems to be a combination of two distinct processes. First, bubble-free icebergs need to form at the bases of ice shelves jutting out into the Southern Ocean. At the same time, ground-up yellow-red glacial dust from Antarctica’s bedrock has to be brought along for the ride.

“It’s pretty much Antarctica’s version of mixing blue and yellow paint together to get green,” says James Lea, a glaciologist at the University of Liverpool who was not involved with the work.

"Many U.S. journalists like to refer to these curiosities as emerald icebergs," says  U. of Washington professor Steve Warren, "perhaps recalling the 1798 epic  The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, in which poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge describes an Antarctic sailor seeing “ice, mast high … as green as emerald.”

Glacial ice tends to have a blueish hue because it absorbs the redder, longer wavelengths of light, leaving the bluer, shorter wavelengths free to be scattered back into our eyes but in parts of Antarctica, the ice is so compressed that it lacks any bubbles whatsoever. This creates a longer pathway through the ice so that, to our eyes, it looks incredibly clear and vibrantly blue.

But it is Iron that create the green color. Iron oxide dust gets eroded away as ice flows over East Antarctica’s bedrock. The resulting powdery sediment, so-called glacial flour, eventually makes its way into the sea, where the rusty substance freezes to the base of ice shelves that brake off and form icebergs. As it happens, iron oxides tend to be yellowy-red.  “Ice filters out the red light, and iron oxides filter out the blue light, so green is what's left to escape as refracted sunlight re-emerges from the iceberg,” Professor Warren explained.

CLAYHANDS  NEWS

      In 2022 the Mayor and Planning Commission of the Municipality of San Pablo de Borbur worked with Clayhands to produce 1000 aadobe bricks. In the region there are two old adobe houses still standing over 100 years old. The town produced adobe in the past but stopped 40 years ago and nobody remembers the process. Our project brought adobe construction to light again and interested many local farmers and builders. For the year 2023 we plan to continue the project and build something with these bricks. Borbur is known as the gateway to the Coscuez and Peñas Blancas emerald mines. The region needs more projects like this to keep the young people from leaving for the big city and to provide employment and development.

      Consider donating to Clayhands. Your dollar  (now at 4800 pesos) goes a long way!

Many thanks to recent donor Edward Boehm of RareSource Gems.

  and also to Recent Donor ROGER SCHAT - Thank You So Much!

 SEE YOU ALL IN TUCSON ! 1

           Best Wishes                       Ron Ringsrud  Box 128, Saratoga, CA 95070