To find fluorescent minerals you have to search where they are! Just wandering around with a UV torch is unlikely to find much. So how do you find where they are? This page will help you.
1. You’ll need a quality Long Wave or Short Wave torch or both
2. Decide the area or place where you want to look.
3. Go to www.mindat.org. At the bottom of every page are two boxes, “Mineral” and “Locality”. Enter the name of the locality or place where you want to look for fluorescent minerals. I entered Nundle NSW.
4. You will see the location of sites where minerals have been found. Click on a mining icon or a circle with a number which will bring up more mining icons or more circles. Keep going until you can see an icon where you want to look, and click it. You will see a list of the minerals that have been found there. (I clicked on the circle near Nundle, then one of the icons)
5. Then click the place you want to look. (I clicked on Fogarty’s Antimony Mine). You will get the list of minerals found there, in this example quartz, scheelite, stibnite.
6. To check which of those minerals fluoresce, go to www.fluomin.org and click on “List of Luminescent Minerals” then “Complete List on One Page”. Here you will find a very long list of minerals that fluoresce. If a mineral in your Mindat list does not appear, it is not fluorescent. If it does appear click on it to get details of its fluorescence. Or you can use “Search in the Database” which may be quicker. (Quartz probably not, scheelite Yes – SW, stibnite No)
7. OK! Go to your chosen area and see what you can find!
8. If you need more help contact me at graham@fluoromins.com.au.
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