SUPERMOONS, CREDNERITE, AND BLACK COFFEE

 

My posts this summer/fall have been non-existent as I noted in my last and only post.  I finally have conquered my office, sort of, and now the garage awaits me---a never ending task. One can never “catch up” with organizing the garage, at least not me ( and virtually all my friends). Unfortunately, that mighty office conquer has not left much time for minerals except for a few days this week. I am now, and have in the past, been paying for the sins of my youth, along with most of my male friends, as we all make numerous visits to the dermatologist. No hat wearing while riding a tractor in the hot Kansas summer sun. So, this current surgery involved removing carcinoma lesions from my scalp, and the side of the nose. Not much fun after the injected numbness wore off as each demanded 5 or 6 sutures. Of course, “today’s hurt” is much better than the alternative!

But there are joys in life as this last month has been exciting for ole dedicated moon watchers like me. The home we purchased here in the Village of Holmen, WI, has tall red pines and a deciduous understory as the eastern property border. The western part of the neighborhood  also has trees that block a view of the horizon. However, in the “middle” there is a huge expanse of “sky” that is visible. In the mornings I plop my rear on a deck chair, sip my hot, bold, black Kona coffee and watch the sun filter through the pines at sunrise. The birds seem happy, although not noisy as in the spring, but certainly they visit the large feeder. In the evenings I switch sitting areas and hit the rocking chair facing west with a cold IPA at sunset. A nice relaxing beginning and end of the daylight.  BTW, daylight seems to be rapidly disappearing as we slide toward the Winter Solstice.

Observing the night sky is the time to contemplate and celebrate being alive. We have little light pollution here and the noise pollution is very low except for occasional Friday night football games. Last September 17^th I enjoyed the night of the Harvest Full Moon, a Supermoon. And, to add visual joy to the experience, there was a partial lunar eclipse starting at about 7:40 pm CDT and peaking two hours later. Only about 8-10 percent of the upper moon was covered at the peak eclipse but still, that was impressive . The Harvest Full Moon received its name from the fact that before massive mechanization farmers could stay in the fields long after dark. I certainly remember working late in the evenings picking corn in the moonlight for my Uncle farmer. It was money for a poor kid but I must confess I always was on the lookout for wolves and other giant critters!

On October 17^th 2024, the largest Supermoon of the year popped up as the Hunter Moon. The name seems to reference the beginning of the hunting season in olden times when wild game played a major part in the food chain of rural folks. Of course, the moon  appeared “almost full” on a couple of nights before and after the 17th, and I enjoyed watching it move over the trees into my open sky. Several recent nights around the 17^th brought honking geese moving south to better feeding grounds, perhaps due to a little cold snap of 27 F. It seems I don’t need much activity to give me satisfaction; so, the moon cycles and the colorful turning trees make for a “good time” that I intersperse with observations of my minerals. 

Fortunately, discovering “new” minerals in my drawers is always exciting. Recently I pulled open a magic drawer and discovered the cache of perky boxes I snagged last winter in Tucson. The cache of about 30 micros contained mostly rather common minerals but it is hard to complain about the price—ten bucks for the quart bag. I have not examined each specimen but have noted the identifications and collecting localities are attached to all. Unfortunately, the collectors, according to hand printed labels, are varied and unknown.

But common or not, a semi rare “jewel” periodically shows up. Today I pulled out crednerite, a copper manganese oxide (CuMnO₂) with a genesis of oxidation of ores of copper and manganese (that seems reasonable!). The Type specimen was found in the Glockensstern Mine in Thuringia, Germany. Although not always a valid/true indicator, the number of photos displayed in MinDat seems to “say something” about the commonness (is that a word) of minerals. Crednerite displays only 22 photos with 20 from Europe, one from Australia, and one from the U.S. So, it seems rare or at least uncommon. The one U.S. photo is from the Maid of Sunshine Mine in the Gleason Turquoise District in Cochise, County, Arizona. However, Anthony and others, in their seminal 1995 edition of Mineralogy of Arizona (I do not own the latest edition) stated crednerite from “Cochise County, Bisbee, Warren District, identified from an old specimen in the collections of the University of Arizona (UA 6993), Dallas Shaft (Graeme, 1993)”.

The Gleason-Courtland mines (Turquoise Mines) are not far from Tombstone and a few years ago I drove over to see about exploring some old dumps of former turquoise mines. Not a smart move as the claims are private and permission was turned down in a very plain and informative manner. OK, just an ole rockhound wanting to enjoy some outdoor life of his later years!

The Maid of Sunshine is one of eleven mines usually called the Leadville Group, after a Mining Company. The exposed rocks generally consist of a basal Cambrian sandstone/quartzite covered with a shaley- limestone overlain by  thick Carboniferous limestone. Monzonite intrusions, sills and dikes associated with a larger pluton, cut through the Cambrian units and are responsible for bringing in mineral-laden water. At the Maid of Sunshine Mine a large thrust fault shoved the Cambrian Bolsa Quartzite over the much younger Carboniferous Abrigo Limestone. The copper minerals at the mine generally were deposited along the fault plane. Several hundred to several thousand tons (estimates) of copper ore were extracted from the Leadville Group Mines, mostly in the early 20^th Century, and transported by rail to a smelter in El Paso. This mining history noted above was taken from a report authored by S.W. Greenidge in 1917 and reprinted as a digitized file in the Arizona Department of Mines and Mineral Resources Mining Collection located at:   

http://docs.azgs.az.gov/OnlineAccessMineFiles/M-R/MaidOfSunshineCochiseT19SR25ESec16.pdf

 MinDat lists 31 known minerals from the Maid of Sunshine with the photos dominated by blue, green, and blue-green minerals such as azurite, malachite,  and cyanotrichite. One small specimen provided a photograph of crednerite, a steel gray to black mineral with a metallic luster and a hardness o ~4.0 (Mohs). Although the specimen seems to consist of stacked platy crystals. At any rate, my specimen is so tiny that I simply can’t determine the crystal morphology. 

Mass of crednerite crystal in a multimineral matrix. Width of largest mass is ~1.4 mm. Check out the crednerite photo at the Maid of Sunshine gallery.
 

Two different rotated views of steel gray crednerite ??crystals with the upper photo showing a “group” of spheroids.  Width FOV .7 mm.

Unknown mineral in the crednerite matrix. Width FOV ~.5 mm. I could use some help on this one. I presume some sort of crystalline quartz.

 

YES AM STILL AROUND

There has been a big pause in my writing this summer. After 18 years of residing in Colorado Springs, the house was packed up and "stuff" was transported back to Wisconsin, my home prior to Colorado. I have  moved from the hustle and traffic of metro CO SPS with a population of 701,000 to the Village of Holmen, WI, population 10,616. We live in a small  neighborhood bordered by a sand prairie on the north, very tall red pines on the east, mixed Trees on the west, and a main sort of road (although not very busy) on the south. Kids play in the streets and adults walk their dogs and stop by to introduce themselves. Main street of the  Village , maybe a half mile away, is anchored by Smokie's Bar, Rudy`s Feed and Seed, the Meat Market and Locker (stopped in and purchased a pound of bratwurst today), and about 10 small family run businesses. August 16-18 is the 2024 version of the annual"Kornfest" complete with a parade, food tents, sweet buttered corn, beer garden , bands and more. Also featured is a float from the Sons of Norway (my former Assistant Dean is the President and has a prime seat on the float). We visited the weekly farmers market tonight and one of these evenings is one of the free concerts in the park. The major north÷south road leads south to Onalaska (16,000) and LaCrosse (~50 000). Important to persons of my age is hea,th care. Never fear as Mayo has a very large hospital and clinic while the Gunderson System has another large hospital and clinics. I suppose downtown LaCrosse is 10 miles away. Also important is that the Village has two mom/pop coffee houses and an old fashioned drive in serving fantastic root beer floats and the largest soft serve ice cream cones I have ever  observed. The mighty Mississippi River is a mile away and borders down town Onalaska and LaCrosse. The U of WI LaCrosse is my former institution from where I "retired" 18 years ago. I will return to writing as soon as the unpacking lets  me out of the cardboard entanglement.

BTW, I get questions about moving from the city to a rural area--will I get bored? At this stage in my life I am ready for some slow traffic and peace and quiet. I grew up in a small town in Kansas with a population of 400- and a high school with 47 students. My spouse is from an ever smaller community in South Dakota so we are familiar with rural life. The Holmen-Onalaska-LaCrosse area is a very, very vibrant community with two major medical systems and the University of Wisconsin LaCrosse (number 2 ranked public university in Wisconsin behind the flagship University of Wisconsin Madison) plus the private Viterbo University and a large Technical College. Across the River is LaCresent, MN. The Mississippi River is nearly a mile wide with many channels and islands and is a boater's paradise. The forested cliffs bordering the River are 500-700 feet high; so no Pikes Peak but a beautiful and different ecosystem to contemplate. 

I will return to writing as soon as the unpacking lets  me out of the cardboard entanglement.   

For now, signing off from the Village.  Mike

 

 

 

 

A CLUSTER OF "SPIDERS" ON VOLTAITE

 

At the recent Tucson event I was constantly perusing big and small and tiny displays of Perky Boxes looking for interesting minerals that I could afford. Some of the purchases were a mixed bag (in reality) of common and less common minerals with good locality/mine information but lacking names of collectors. For example, a bag of 29 Boxes with mounted micros/thumbnails for the price of $10. I figured the Perky Boxes, many with the minerals on mounting pedestals, were worth the ten bucks. Perhaps the most interesting of those minerals were crednerite (copper manganese oxide) from the Maid of Sunshine Mine in Arizona (one photo in MinDat) and wherryite (lead, copper mixed-sulfate silicate) from the famous Mammoth (Tiger) Mine in Arizona. I thought it was a good buy, even if there were four smithsonites.

However, I also picked up numerous individual specimens including a pretty, blue, doubly terminated, crystal of fluorapatite from Brazil. I nabbed on to a “one-in-the-collection” specimen of voltaite and copiapite, both ferrous-ferric sulfate minerals. This fact was interesting to me along with the tidbit that voltaite was named for Count Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta who invented the electric battery and is forever remembered for volts in battery and electrical terminology (more on batteries later). And thirdly, the specimen came from the Rio Tinto Mine in Spain that perhaps is the oldest major mine in the world.

Voltaite ( K₂Fe²⁺₅Fe³⁺₃Al(SO₄)₁₂ · 18H₂O) is a mixed valence iron compound containing both ferrous iron—with a 2+ oxidation state—and ferric iron--with a 3+ oxidation state.  Copiapite (Fe²⁺Fe³⁺₄(SO₄)₆(OH)₂ · 20H₂O) is also a mixed valence iron sulfate but lacks potassium.   It is one of three minerals that is a purely a ferrous-ferric sulfate. To me, voltaite looks black and almost metallic with almost vitreous luster; however. MinDat states the true color is green to greenish-black with a resinous luster (not as bright and resembles the luster on plastic). What crystals I can see on my specimen resemble cubes but are often fractured and massive. MinDat states crystals are commonly octahedral and modified by the cube and dodecahedron. Although voltaite looks “hard” it has been measured as fairly soft   ~3.00+.  

Dark black/greenish-black voltaite with light yellow-cream and hairy halotrichite crawling around. Very tiny, orange to yellow-orange globules of copiapite are scattered around. Width FOV ~3 mm.
 

This ~2.0 FOV photomicrograph is interesting. Note the more "shiny" voltaite and also in the upper left quadrant two-three light gray, almost cubic, much less lustrous crystals that may be gratonite, a lead arsenic sulfosalt (Pb₉As₄S₁₅). An even more problematic identification is the brownish-orange, cube-like crystal in the upper right quadrant that could be romerite, a mixed iron valence sulfate (Fe²⁺Fe³⁺₂(SO₄)₄ · 14H₂O). However, these identifications are really above my pay grade.

A brightly colored (yellow to orange ) voltaite traveling companion is copiapite, the mixed valance iron sulfate lacking potassium. It occurs as an earthy fine-granular crust or globule that is very fragile and soft (~2.5 Mohs). Crystals are rare and certainly not visible in my specimen.

Photomicrograph of yellow-cream halotrichite, yellow orange globules of copiapite, and the dark voltaite matrix.

What makes this specimen interesting is that the voltaite and copiapite appear to be under attack by a cluster of spiders (yes cluster is the correct term). Of course, these “spiders” are really halotrichite consisting of  numerous radial or “globby” hair-like crystals that are yellowish to whitish encrustations or are scattered across the matrix. They are very soft (~1.5 Mohs) and brittle. Halotrichite is a single valance ferrous iron (2+) aluminum sulfate (FeAl₂(SO₄)₄ · 22H₂O).

Hair-like crystals of halotrichite. Width FOV ~1.5 mm.

My specimen came from the world- famous Rio Tinto Mine located in the Iberian Pyrite Belt (IPB) located in the southwest part of the Iberian Peninsula, comprising part of Portugal and of the provinces of Huelva and Seville in  Spain. The IPB corresponds to an area of Devonian-Carboniferous volcanic and sedimentary rocks containing massive polymetallic sulfide deposits. This area forms an arcuate belt, about 150 miles long and up to 40 miles wide, trending westwards from near Seville in Spain to west-northwest in South Portugal. Both the eastward and westward extents of the belt are covered by Tertiary sedimentary rocks. The IBP contains the largest concentration of massive sulfide deposits in the world and more than 250 deposits are known.  Thus far the IBP has yielded more than 2000 million tons of removed ore, and has some 400 million tons of reserve for possible exploitation. However, IBP is a classic example  of the negative environmental impact caused by  long-lasting  and intensive mining development. Almost continued mining and working for 5000+years have modified the landscape and caused  a steadily increasing pollution of water resources at a regional scale. The generation of acid waters from the  erosion of  massive sulfides and mine waste washing, and the drainage of mine waters have originated  ecosystems (organisms living in extreme environments) unique in this world. The natural or environmental change created by human activity has created an environmental disaster. (Disclaimer: the above paragraph was cherry picked from an essay “constructed” by Microsoft Bing Co-Pilot AI. I suspect much is plagiarized. However, I wanted to see what the buzz was all about!).

The most important commodities (copper, sulfur, gold, silver, lead, tin, iron, and zinc) mined from the IBP were found in massive cupriferous pyrite; lead- and zinc-rich pyrite; various copper-rich ores such as chalcopyrite and covellite; disseminated type porphyry copper-rich ores; and gold/silver-rich oxidized ores associated with a goethite-limonite gossan. Today the mines are mostly in decline or closed. However, there are numerous proposals floating around asking for help to fund the next World Class Mine in the Iberian Pyrite Belt. Interestingly, coal is the leading mineral commodity mined today from Spain.