Transparent Gemstones & Minerals

The following is a list of Transparent gems and minerals listed in our database. Click the pictures to get full data, click the X to remove the gem from the list.

Sinhalite

Sinhalite: Sinhalite is a magnesium aluminum borate, and is most commonly found as transparent honey-yellow to brown grains or pebbles with an orthorhombic crystal system. It also appears as pale yellowish, yellow, brown, greenish-brown to black. It occurs in contact metamorphic rocks that are rich in boron, among gneiss or granite where limestones are being replaced through contact with magmatic rock. But (read full)

Orthoclase

Orthoclase: Orthoclase mineral is a silicate of potassium and aluminum, belonging to the Feldspar group. It has the same composition as microcline, but is stable at slightly higher temperatures. It occurs as prismatic, sometimes flat-sided crystals, but in rocks it is usually anhedral. It may be perfectly transparent and yellow or almost colorless, but it is more often semi-opaque and white to grayish-white, (read full)

Phenakite

Phenakite: Phenakite is a rare beryllium silicate with a hexagonal crystal system. It an attractive hard mineral that resembles quartz. It appears as white or colorless rhombohedral crystals or stubby prisms terminated by multiple rhombohedral faces. Twinned crystals are also common. It may be colorless, yellow, pink, or brown. There are occasional chatoyant specimens, and four-rayed star stones with a brow (read full)

Phosphophyllite

Phosphophyllite: Phosphophyllite is a very rare mineral, a hydrated zinc iron manganese phosphate with a monoclinic crystal system. It appears as long prismatic or thick tabular crystals. It is colorless to deep bluish-green. Polysynthetic twinned crystals are common. It is semi-hard, light, with excellent prismatic cleavage. Translucent to transparent with vitreous luster. It turns gray and loses water when hea (read full)

Petalite

Petalite: Petalite is a lithium aluminum silicate that is an important ore of lithium. This mineral forms, rarely, as small crystals, which are commonly twinned. More often, petalite forms as large, cleavable masses. It may be white, grey, pinkish, yellow, or colorless. It is transparent to translucent, with a vitreous to pearly luster, and fuses with difficulty. It forms in very coarse-grained, acid igne (read full)

Euclase

Euclase: Euclase is a silicate with a monoclinic crystal system. It is considered a very rare gem of light blue color. It appears as long or short prismatic crystals, flattened and transparent. It is colorless, white, green, or blue, commonly a pale aquamarine or green, but crystals of a very fine dark blue (from iron) have been found at the Miami mine in Zimbabwe. Crystals are often striated. It (read full)

Chrysoberyl

Chrysoberyl: Chrysoberyl appears as prismatic, tabular crystals often v-shaped twins forming pseudo-hexagonal crystals. Single crystals are rare. May be colorless, green, yellow, gray or brown. A variety, alexandrite, is red in tungsten light but dark green in daylight. This pronounced color change is highly-prized, and the exact tone of colors is important, the ideal being brilliant green turning to fie (read full)

Hauyne

Hauyne: Hauyne is a blue feldspathoid rock-forming mineral, one of four members of the sodalite mineral group that is a component of lapis lazuli. The other three are lazurite, sodalite, and nosean. It is a complex mineral of sodium, calcium, aluminum silicate, and sulfate. Hauyne forms very bright and attractive though uncommon transparent blue dodecahedral or pseudo-octahedral crystals of the cubic sy (read full)

Taaffeite

Taaffeite: Taaffeite is a very rare beryllium magnesium aluminum mineral. No other mineral has both beryllium and magnesium in its composition. It is one of the few gems to be discovered as a faceted stone instead of a rough, as most gemstones are. Rarely cut as a gem, taaffeite looks like a mauve-colored spinel, and its absorption spectrum is similar to it. But gemologists know they've found taaffeite when (read full)

Datolite

Datolite: Datolite is a semi rare silicate mineral of the gadolinite group. It appears as surface-growing, short and stubby, prismatic, large crystals. Its crystal structure is monoclinic, as it has two axes of unequal length inclined to each other, with the third lateral axis at a right angle to the plane that contains the other two. Its aggregates are huge, granular, dense, fibrous, and has porcelaneou (read full)

Topaz

Topaz: The transparent, colored crystals, which also have good luster, are widely used as gems.
Topaz is a silicate of aluminum containing fluorine and hydroxyl which occurs in a variety of delicate colors, nicely added by impurities. It is often found in short to long crystal prisms with pyramid-shaped ends, or just clean finished edges. It is often white, semiopaque, milky, or a faded yellow, (read full)

Diamond

Diamond: In fact Diamond is the only gem material comprised of a single chemical element: pure carbon, like graphite. But the atoms in diamond have been forced into a compact, three-dimensional structure by the high pressures in the upper mantle, where it is formed. Thus diamond is much harder and has a higher specific gravity (3.52) than graphite . There is nothing comparable to it in hardness; it is ther (read full)

Tugtupite

Tugtupite: Tugtupite is a mineral closely related to sodalite and hackmanite, all cyclosilicates whose structural silicate tetrahedrons are arranged in rings. It is also called beryllosodalite and reindeer stone, and crystallizes in the tetragonal system. It is found in fine-grained aggregates of crystals with its own distinctive cyclamen colour. Crystals are very small, tetragonal, almost cubic, or as shor (read full)

Achroite Tourmaline

Achroite Tourmaline: Colorless Tourmaline, also known as white or Achroite Tourmaline is the name given to the clear or colorless version of Tourmaline. The word achroite is Greek for colorless. If you are into birthstones then Achroite Tourmaline is one of the ones used for October. If you follow the zodiac then it's used to represent Libra. Tourmaline in general is found on every continent and is possibly the (read full)

Lazulite

Lazulite: Lazulite is a compact, pleochroitic mineral which forms a series to scorzalite. It is dichroic, with a monoclinic crystal system. It appears as pointed, pseudo-dipyramidal, bright blue crystals in microgranular masses. It is hard, medium heavy, fragile with indistinct prismatic cleavage. It is translucent, with vitreous luster. It is infusible, discolors and breaks into small fragments when heat (read full)

Spessartine

Spessartine: Spessartine is the manganese-aluminum variety of Garnet, belonging to its sub-group of aluminum garnets. Garnets are a group of silicate minerals that all crystallize in the isometric system and have the same chemical formula, but in a diversity of proportions, so garnets show up as different varieties, in a broad range of environments. Spessartine possesses the form typical of garnet crystals, w (read full)

Gypsum

Gypsum: Gypsum is the most common sulphate mineral. It is usually the first evaporite mineral to be precipitated form water due to its poor solubility. Varieties include Selenite (or "spectacle stone), which is colorless and transparent; Satin Spar, the fibrous, translucent form with silky luster, which when cut cabochon shows pearly chatoyant effects; Alabaster, used for ornaments, which is firm, fine-gr (read full)

Howlite

Howlite: Howlite an opaque, massive mineral used for ornamental and utilitarian articles. is a rarity for collectors It has a monoclinic tabular crystal system with a subvitreous luster. The most common occurrence is in the form of a cauliflower. Howlite is found in borate deposits, with most ornamental pieces found from various sites in California (USA) and Mexico. It occurs as opaque white, and may be (read full)

Vesuvianite

Vesuvianite: Vesuvianite is a hydrous calcium magnesium aluminum silicate with a tetragonal crystal system. It is the preferred name used by mineralogists for all transparent varieties of Idocrase, the name used by gemmologists. It is a gem mineral that appears in diverse colors, and thus is prized by collectors. A compact green variety of vesuvianite that looks like jade is known as californite. A greenish-b (read full)

Enstatite

Enstatite: Enstatite is the most common silicate under the Orthopyroxene group in the larger classification of Pyroxene minerals (which are rock-forming silicates). Orthopyroxenes form a chemical series composed of the magnesium-rich enstatite, and the iron-containing bronzite and hypersthene. It has an orthorhombic crystal system and appears rarely as stubby, prismatic crystals, but more commonly in fibr (read full)

Hambergite

Hambergite: Hambergite is a beryllium borate mineral in the classification of Nitrates, Carbonates, and Borates and is an extremely rare gemstone. It occurs as transparent colourless orthorhombic prismatic crystals which are usually well crystallized, sometimes twinned. Its colors range to white, white grayish, and yellowish white. Crystals are striated along the prisms. It is very hard and has one directi (read full)

Titanite

Titanite: Titanite is a very rare calcium titanium silicate that is an important ore of titanium. It is also called Sphene. Its crystals are very rare, brilliant, and sparkles like diamond. It appears as crystals that are prisms with pyramid tips, or stubby, wedge-shaped, flattened crystals, or tabular and platy. There are also titanite crystal twins that have grown side by side or interpenetrated, or in g (read full)

Oligoclase

Oligoclase: Oligoclase is a mineral of the plagioclase feldspar series, other members of which are Labradorite and Anorthite. It forms as tabular crystals, which are commonly twinned, with parallel or criss-cross twinning striations. It appears as massive, granular, or compact. It may show brilliant reflections from inclusions. It is light, transparent to translucent, with a vitreous luster and may come in (read full)

Spodumene

Spodumene: Spodumene is a lithium aluminum silicate that crystallizes in the monoclinic system. It is one of several rock-forming minerals in the Pyroxene group, which are physically-related as their chemical content is quite similar and forms a chain. Fellow pyroxenes are jadeite, enstatite, diopside, hypersthene, augite, acmite, hedenbergite, pigeonite, and aegirineaugite. It appears as prismatic crystals (read full)

Celestine

Celestine: Celestine appears as colorless, or pale blue, and is transparent to translucent, and has two directions of cleavage. It is very brittle, and has a vitreous to pearly luster. It occurs in sediments associated with sulfur, with evaporate minerals like gypsum, anhydrite, and halite; in hydrothermal veins with galena and sphalerite; as concretions in clay and marl; in cavities in basic lavas, and i (read full)

Scapolite

Scapolite: Scapolite is a mixed crystal series, a complicated sodium calcium aluminum silicate group composed of calcium-rich meionite, and sodium-rich marialite. It appears as yellow, blue, pink, violet, or colorless prismatic crystals with a tetragonal system, mostly surface-growing, with perfect cleavage. These crystals are usually in aggregates that are massive granular, long columnar, dense, with vitr (read full)

Chalcedony

Chalcedony: Chalcedony is a compact form of silica, composed of microscopic quartz crystals. It is softer than quartz and denser than opal. Its appearance may range from transparent to translucent to opaque. The main types are chalcedony, which is uniformly colored, and agate, which has curved bands or zones of varying color. Varieties include the red to reddish brown, translucent carnelian, the red, opaqu (read full)

Sphalerite

Sphalerite: Sphalerite is a zinc iron sulfide mineral formed in an isometric system. It is trimorphous with wurtzite and matraite. All three have the same chemical compound but crystallize in three different forms. The most common crystal forms of sphalerite are in dodecahedrons and tetrahedrons, elegant three-sided formations, often twinned, and otherwise usually massive, thus looking like brownish-black or (read full)

Danburite

Danburite: Danburite is a silicate of clear, prismatic crystals, with wedge-shaped terminations. It is occasionally pale yellow, a variety of gemstone feldspars group that resembles topaz. It is very hard, heavy, and has a transparent to vitreous to greasy luster. It fuses easily into a colorless glass, coloring the flame green, has a luminescence that is sky blue to pale blue-green, and also shows red therm (read full)

Sapphire

Sapphire: Sapphire is the blue variety of Corundum. Sapphires can be a very dark blue, to the point of seeming dense and blackish from a distance, sometimes accompanied by a blue to dull green pleochroism, which is only visible from the side in cut stones. They may also be a strong, but not too bright blue, easily recognizable from a distance, this being the real color. Other possibilities are light, usual (read full)

Moonstone

Moonstone: The variety name Moonstone is usually used to describe an optical effect and unlike most variety names it is not confined to a single species (The term is also applied to albite-moonstone, microcline-moonstone, labradorite-moonstone). But Moonstone most prominently refers to the orthoclase feldspar, Adularia Moonstone, a microperthitic association of orthoclase and albite) and rarely to Albite M (read full)

Carnelian

Carnelian: Carnelian is a variety of chalcedony, which is translucent and is red to reddish-brown. It may also occur as flesh-colored chalcedony, known as cornelian or carnelian. It is slightly similar in appearance to its relation, the dark brown chalcedony, sard. The colour of cornelian is caused by colloidally dispersed hematite. Other reddish chalcedonies may have been colored by heating since if they (read full)

Dioptase

Dioptase: Dioptase is a relatively rare emerald-green mineral, sometimes tinged bluish or blackish. Crystals are small with a vitreous luster, and is transparent to translucent. Its green is very strong and bright even when compared to the more subtle green of emerald. It forms green to blue-green encrustations and fillings of enamel-like or earthy texture. It is uncommon, and found in the weathered zone (read full)

Cassiterite

Cassiterite: Cassiterite may form as short or slender prismatic, or bipyramidal, elbow-shaped crystals. It has a crystal surface reflecting light as in a mirror. They may occur as massive, granular, botryoidal, and reniform. When found in granular, banded, fibrous masses, it looks like wood. When found in groups of large bright crystals, it is usually called "diamond tin." A red variety cut for collectors is k (read full)

Dumortierite

Dumortierite: Dumortierite is a variety of gemstone of basic aluminum borosilicate with an orthorhombic crystal system. It appears usually in columnar or fibrous, radiating aggregates, sometimes reddish brown, dark blue, violet-blue. On the rare occasions that dumortierite forms crystals, they are prismatic. Faceted or prismatic blue or violet samples are rare, due to scarcity of individual crystals. It is (read full)

Peridot

Peridot: Peridot is the greener type of gem-quality specimen of Forsterite-Olivine, which is an important, rock-forming mineral, a silicate of magnesium and iron. Often their names are used interchangeably. The bottle-green/olive green type of olivine is also called olivine. The yellower type of olivine is called Chrysolite. It forms as thick, tabular crystals, frequently with wedge-shaped terminations. T (read full)

Pyrope

Pyrope: Pyrope is the iron magnesium and aluminum silicate of the pyrope-almandine series in the Pyralspite group of the Garnet family. Its beautiful deep-red gem quality makes it one of the most popular. Pure pyrope is colorless, but its red color, sometimes very bright, is due to small quantities of chrome in the crystal structure. It appears as dodecahedral or trapezohedral crystals, dark red, usually (read full)

Heliodor Beryl

Heliodor Beryl: Heliodor is a gem variety of Beryl with golden-yellow or light yellow-green color. In many cases heliodor is also used to include gems known as Golden beryl/ Golden emerald, though not to be confused with gold beryl. It is sometimes hard to establish a dividing line between heliodor and golden beryl. Its main characteristic is its color, which is the yellow-green of olive oil. Its pigment is uran (read full)

Calcite

Calcite: Of all minerals, calcite is by far the richest in forms. It appears as rhombohedral, scalenohedral, or prismatic crystals, often intergrown or twinned. It occurs in masses, colorless or in white, pink, green, or yellow, and often visibly thermoluminescent (emits light when heated). Like quartz, calcite often has twinned structure caused by temperature and stress changes. It is semi-hard, wit (read full)

Cerussite

Cerussite: Cerussite is a colorless carbonate of the aragonite mineralogical classification. It appears as colorless or white crystals with grayish tints, elongated and generally twinned to form a reticulated network with 60-degree angles, as stubby, tabular crystals in star- or heart-shaped twins. It can also be grey, greenish, or blue as a result of inclusions, such as lead, or copper. Impure cerussite is (read full)

Kornerupine

Kornerupine: Kornerupine is a rare magnesium aluminum borate silicate which occurs as transparent prismatic crystals of the orthorhombic system. It is hard and a has good cleavage in one direction. Colours include a characteristic dark green leaning to brown and a rare and attractive bright vanadium green. This pleochroic colours are brown to greenish brown. Chatoyant stones show a bright eye against a dark g (read full)

Citrine

Citrine: Citrine is an attractive type of quartz, which is the commonest mineral on the earth's surface. But citrine itself is an uncommon macrocrystalline variety. Its yellow color brought about by its iron hydrate content, its reddish yellow from a trace of ferric iron. It forms hexagonal prisms, terminated by pyramidal shapes. Its faces are often striated, and the crystals twinned and distorted, having (read full)

Iolite

Iolite: Iolite is the violet-colored variety of Cordierite (named after French geologist P. Cordier), a silicate of aluminum and magnesium, with an orthorhombic crystal system. Though the name cordierite is used by mineralogists, the name iolite has become established among gemologists. It appears as stubby, prismatic crystals, pesudo-hexagonal twins with a glassy appearance. It is frequently microgranul (read full)

Zircon

Zircon: Zircon is a zirconium silicate with a tetragonal crystal system, and also contains thorium and uranium. It appears as stubby, prismatic, isolated or sometimes dipyramidal, like two pyramids connected at their bases; or in twins, colorless to yellow, red, brown, gray or green, in irregular granules. It is very hard, heavy, with indistinct cleavage, and shell-like fracture. It is sometimes perfect (read full)

Unarovite

Unarovite: Uvarovite is a rare, calcium-chromium emerald-green variety of Garnet. Together with grossular (calcium-aluminum) and andradite (calcium-iron), it makes up the series of ugrandite garnets. These three have similar crystal structure and form, but just have different chemical proportions. It occurs in mixed crystals, so there is a partial replacement of some elements by others. It stands out from t (read full)

Hessonite

Hessonite: Hessonite is the brown-orange variety of Grossular, a nesosilicate in the Garnet group, with an isometric crystal system. It appears with dodecahedral or trapezohedral crystals, cinnamon-brown to orange because of its iron content. Its color matches that of the oil of cinnamon. It also appears as golden-yellow, yellow-brown, or reddish-brown. It is very hard, heavy, fragile, has no cleavage. It (read full)

Kyanite

Kyanite: Kyanite is an aluminum silicate that occurs as elongated and tabular in groups of light-blue crystals darker toward the center, or flat, bladed crystals in schists and gneisses, or as radiating rosettes in quartz. It is trimorphous with sillimanite and andalusite. Kyanite is also known as disthene, meaning, "double strength." This refers to the fact that the hardness along the length of kyanite c (read full)

Epidote

Epidote: Epidote is widespread, forms a continuous series of minerals, ending with clinozoisite, which contains no iron. It occurs as crystals elongated and often striated parallel to length, and also as massive, fibrous, or granular habits. Epidote has a yellow-green color, ranges from yellowish-greenish to greenish-black. It has vitreous luster, and is transparent to nearly opaque. It has one perfe (read full)

Scheelite

Scheelite: Scheelite is a mineral in the group of Sulfates, Chromates, Molybdates, Tungstates. It has the same crystal structure and outside appearance as powellite. But scheelite is a calcium-tungstate, while powellite is a calcium-molybdate.

In rocks, scheelite may appear as crystals like two pyramids connected at its bases, or pseudo-octahedral, or having table-like faces, with detectable p (read full)

Hematite

Hematite: Hematite is considered the most important Iron Ore mineral. Its crystals appear as reasonably thick. They may be tabular, or rhombohedral, and occasionally prismatic or pyramidal. Tabular crystals may form as rosettes, when they are called "iron roses." It also occurs as massive, compact, columnar, fibrous, reniform, botryoidal, stalactitic, foliated, and granular. When hematite forms in a renif (read full)

Sillimanite

Sillimanite: Sillimanite is a grayish-blue aluminum silicate with an orthorhombic crystal system. It is trimorphic with andalusite and kyanite. All three have the same chemical compound but their atoms each arrange to create three different crystal forms. It appears as long, slender crystals without distinct terminations, in off-white, gray, brown, pale green, slate-blue, blue-green, and these crystals are of (read full)

Staurolite

Staurolite: Staurolite is a hydrous magnesium aluminum silicate that crystallizes in the monoclinic system. It appears as coarse, dark gold-brown prisms, or sometimes reddish-brown to black stubby crystals. On weathered rock, it stands out in contrast like sand-coated yellowish brown prisms. Surfaces are often rough or covered with an earthy coating because of natural alteration. It frequently occurs in ch (read full)

Dravite

Dravite: Dravite also called Brown Tourmaline is a sodium magnesium-rich mineral in the Tourmaline group of silicates, with a hexagonal system. Other members of this group include elbaite (sodium lithium aluminum rich); schorl and buergerite (sodium iron rich); uvite (calcium magnesium rich); and liddicoatite (calcium lithium aluminum rich). A continuous solid solution series exists between uvite and dravi (read full)

Rose Quartz

Rose Quartz: Rose quartz is a usually cloudy, translucent, delicate pale pink, deep pink, rose-red to quasi-white and often veined variety of Quartz. Also known as pink quartz , rose quartz may occur more often as anhedral masses or rarely as crystals which often reach quite large sizes. Rose quartz almost always occurs in pegmatites in massive crystalline bodies which do not show crystal faces. These larg (read full)

Spinel

Spinel: Spinel is an extensive group of minerals in which magnesium may be replaced with iron, zinc, and above all, manganese. The hardness and fine colors of gem quality spinel, known as Noble Spinel, set it apart as a gem material from other types of spinel. It normally occurs as distinct octahedral crystals, as clusters also of octahedral habit, or as characteristic twins. The crystals are often iso (read full)

Sodalite

Sodalite: Sodalite is a sodium aluminum silicate chloride in the Sodalite group with an isometric crystal system. Its royal blue forms are the best known. As a mineral, it is a principal component of lapis lazuli. It appears very rare as dodecahedrons, crystals with 12 faces, but usually it shows as compact masses, bright blue, white or gray with green tints. It is unsaturated and rarely appears with inclu (read full)

Fluorite

Fluorite: Fluorite is a widely-distributed mineral in the Halide classification, and is now mined in vast quantities. It is a suitable mineral for collectors and is rarely cut as a gem, but massive varieties are carved as ornamental objects. It appears in cubes, octahedrons, dodecahedrons, while other forms are rarer. Compact, banded, and concretionary masses are frequently found. Most fine crystals of flu (read full)

Tektites

Tektites: Tektites are glass specimens rich in silica that many believed were actually meteorites. But, the locations in which tektites have been found, and their chemistry, led scientists to suggest that they may not in fact have come from outside planet Earth. Another conjecture is that tektites are formed from rocks that melted after being hit by a meteorite. Tektites actually have a composition not unl (read full)

Diopside

Diopside: Diopside is a type of Clinopyroxene, which are abundant, rock-forming minerals. These are embedded and surface-growing crystals, short columnar, and tabular, almost square or octagonal in cross section. It is the magnesium-bearing end member in the isomorphous, monoclinic diopside-hedenbergite series, a complete solid solution series in which two intermediate members, salite and ferrosalite, have (read full)

Emerald

Emerald: Emerald is the most prized variety of the mineral Beryl. It sometimes fetches higher prices than diamond. It appears as pale green to bright green. Though it is the green variety of beryl, not all gem-quality green beryls are called emeralds; yellow-green stones are called "heliodors;"soft blue-green or even pale green specimens are called "aquamarines." The typical color of emerald is a bea (read full)

Grossular Garnet

Grossular Garnet: Grossular is a nesosilicate in the Garnet group, with an isometric crystal system. Together with uvarovite and andradite, the three are known as the "ugrandite garnets," an isomorphous series of calcium garnet minerals. It appears with dodecahedral or trapezohedral crystals of various colors; normally characterized by a green color, but also may be colorless, pale green or milky when pure, cinnam (read full)

Zoisite

Zoisite: Zoisite is a hydrous calcium aluminum silicate in the Epidote group, with an orthorhombic crystal system, three crystal axes at right angles to each other, all of varying lengths. It appears in elongated, prismatic crystals, with fine parallel lines on the prism faces and usually poorly terminated. It also appears frequently in formless grains, poorly-defined crystals, rodlike aggregates and gran (read full)

Microcline

Microcline: Microcline is a silicate of potassium and aluminum, and an alkali member of the feldspar group. It is the phase of this compound that is stable at low temperature. The feldspars are major constituents of the rocks on the earth's crust and comprise some of the most important rock-forming minerals. The four feldspars - orthoclase, sanidine, microcline and anorthoclase - comprise a group called the (read full)