Travel to Australia to find the worlds finest opals where 95% of them are found in the arid, remote outback deserts. The ancient Australian aborigine lore taught that the Creator came down to earth on a rainbow and the very spot where his foot touched the ground the stones started gleaming in all the colors of the rainbow and the opal was born.
There are a variety of opals but all share one characteristic: they shine and sparkle in a constantly varying play of colors described by gemologists as “opalising”. This color play makes the opal attractive, fascinating and valuable. In 1960s a team of Australian scientists analyzed opals with an electron microscope and discovered that small spheres from silica gel causes interference and the refraction of light resulting in “opalising”.
Pliny, the famous Roman author, called opal a gemstone which combines the best possible characteristics of the most beautiful of gemstones: the fine sparkle of Almandine, the shining purple of Amethyst, the golden yellow of Topaz, and the deep blue of Sapphire, ”so that all colors shine and sparkle together in a beautiful combination“.
Opal
