What Does A Fire Opal Look Like

The real opal and the non opal layer attached to it.

What does a fire opal look like.

Opalescence is often used to refer to play of color but the term should only be used to describe the milky iridescence of common opals which do not. These three stones show the color range of fire opal a name given to specimens of opal with a fiery background color. Fire opal is a transparent to translucent opal with warm body colors of yellow to orange to red. Like the traditional opal fire opals can occasionally display signs of iridescence in very bright light.

Transparent specimens have a good luster. Fire opals like other opals are relatively hard rating a 5 5 to 6 5 on the hardness scale. Doublets and triplets however will look layered. Our opal earrings look like the surface might be a chip of brilliant colours in the sun that at a point looks like a diamond however the opal is not straight through.

Any information would be appreciated. It may or may not exhibit play of color the color of fire opal can be as vivid as seen in the three stones shown here. Triplets are often glued on to a black plastic glass or vitrolite backing. Although it does not usually show any play of color occasionally a stone will exhibit bright green flashes.

Look at the back of the opal does it look or feel like a kind of hard black or grey plastic. Its water content may range from 3 to 21 by weight but is usually between 6 and 10. Doublets are a little more difficult to identify as they often use a natural potch black colourless opal or ironstone the brown boulder opal host rock backing. You should be able to see a thin regular line where the two layers are joined together.

From a side view a real opal should look solid. These opals are commonly called mexican fire opals. Fire opal does not exhibit much play of color like other varieties of opal. The orange stone is about 7 x 9 millimeters in size and was mined in oregon.

Fire opals have a very low density lower than that of glass with which it is sometimes confused. Fire opal is a term used for colorful transparent to translucent opal that has a bright fire like background color of yellow orange or red. The orange and yellow stones have a sleepy translucence while the red stone is semitranslucent almost opaque. Solid natural opals in contrast are transparent or white.

Opal is a hydrated amorphous form of silica sio 2 nh 2 o. Doublets have only two layers. The fire opal is a term not commonly used within australia but most famous source of fire opals is the state of querétaro in mexico.