BGuthrie Photos: DC -- Natl Museum of Natural History -- Exhibit: Geology, Gems, and Minerals

DC -- Natl Museum of Natural History -- Exhibit: Geology, Gems, and Minerals:

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Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.

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Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. SINHGE_120427_06.JPG: Hope Diamond
2. SINHGE_121218_14.JPG: Dom Pedro Aquamarine 10,363 carats Pedro Azul, Minas Gerais, Brazil An immense beryl crystal found in the late 1980s yielded the Dom Pedro -- the largest known aquamarine gem. The original crystal was almost two feet in length and weighed nearly 60 lbs. In 1992-1993, gem artist Bernd Munsteiner fashioned the gem and named it after the first two emperors of Brazil. A pattern of tapering "negative cuts" is faceted into the two reverse faces of the obelisk. These facets reflect the light, making it appear to glow from within. The vertical "lines" near the base are hollow tubes that formed naturally in the original crystal.
Multi Column: Number of columns of thumbnails to appear per page (normally defaults to 3): [1 col] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10]
AAA "Gem": AAA considers this location to be a "must see" point of interest. To see pictures of other areas that AAA considers to be Gems, click here.
Description of Subject Matter: Janet Annenberg Hooker Hall of Geology, Gems, and Minerals
September 20, 1997 – Permanent
This hall features 2,500 minerals and gems, including the Hope Diamond, Hooker Emerald Brooch, and Star of Asia sapphire. It also explores the birth and evolution of the solar system and the earth's changing surface and is divided into the following sections:
The Harry Winston Gallery houses the Hope Diamond, in a specially designed case.
The National Gem Collection features:
* the Dom Pedro aquamarine, the world's largest faceted aquamarine, cut into an obelisk standing 13.75 inches tall and weighing 10,363 carats (4.6 pounds)
* the Cindy Chao Black Label Masterpiece Royal Butterfly Brooch (2009), composed of 2,328 gems, including sapphires, diamonds, rubies, and tsavorite (green) garnets, for a total weight of 77 carats; many of the gems fluoresce under ultraviolet light (to be added March 6, 2013)
* the Marie Antoinette diamond earrings
* a 263-carat diamond necklace and a diadem (tiara) given by Napoleon to Empress Marie-Louise
* the Janet Annenberg Hooker fancy yellow diamonds
* 2 topaz crystals from Brazil, weighing 111 and 70 pounds respectively, and a 23,000-carat cut-and-polished topaz
* a 423-carat sapphire set in diamonds
* the DeYoung red and pink diamonds
* the 127-carat Portuguese diamond, the largest cut diamond in the collection
* the Rosser Reeves ruby
* the Carmen Lucia Ruby, weighing 23.1-carats, is one of the largest faceted Burmese rubies known to exist. The stone is set in platinum and flanked by 2 triangular colorless diamonds measuring 1.1 and 1.27 carats.

The Minerals and Gems Gallery features some 2,000 specimens grouped by shape, color, growth, and other characteristics.
The Mine Gallery features a re-creation of 4 mines showing crystal pockets and ore veins in created dioramas.
The Plate Tectonics Gallery illustrates how earthquakes, mountain chains, and volcanoes result from the constantly shifting plates of the Earth' ...More...
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Directly Related Pages: Other pages with content (DC -- Natl Museum of Natural History -- Exhibit: Geology, Gems, and Minerals) directly related to this one: [Display ALL photos on one page]:
- 2021_DC_SINH_Gems: DC -- Natl Museum of Natural History -- Exhibit: Geology, Gems, and Minerals (1 photo from 2021)
- 2019_DC_SINH_Gems: DC -- Natl Museum of Natural History -- Exhibit: Geology, Gems, and Minerals (48 photos from 2019)
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- 2010_DC_SINH_Gems: DC -- Natl Museum of Natural History -- Exhibit: Geology, Gems, and Minerals (17 photos from 2010)
- 2007_DC_SINH_Gems: DC -- Natl Museum of Natural History -- Exhibit: Geology, Gems, and Minerals (3 photos from 2007)
- 2004_DC_SINH_Gems: DC -- Natl Museum of Natural History -- Exhibit: Geology, Gems, and Minerals (7 photos from 2004)
- 2003_DC_SINH_Gems: DC -- Natl Museum of Natural History -- Exhibit: Geology, Gems, and Minerals (4 photos from 2003)
- 2002_DC_SINH_Gems: DC -- Natl Museum of Natural History -- Exhibit: Geology, Gems, and Minerals (8 photos from 2002)
- 2000_DC_SINH_Gems: DC -- Natl Museum of Natural History -- Exhibit: Geology, Gems, and Minerals (8 photos from 2000)
- 1999_DC_SINH_Gems: DC -- Natl Museum of Natural History -- Exhibit: Geology, Gems, and Minerals (7 photos from 1999)
Same Subject: Click on this link to see coverage of items having the same subject: [Museums (Other)] [(Smithsonian) Natural History Museum (Non-Events)] [(Smithsonian) Natural History Museum (Everything)]
2012 photos: Trips this year: three Civil War Trust conferences (Shepherdstown, WV, Richmond, VA, and Williamsburg, VA), a week-long family reunion cruise of the Caribbean, another week-long family reunion in the Wisconsin Dells (with lots of in-transit time in Ohio and Indiana), and my 7th consecutive San Diego Comic-Con trip (including side trips to Zion, Bryce, the Grand Canyon, etc). Ego strokes: I had a picture of Miss DC, Ashley Boalch, published in the Washington Post. I had a photograph of the George Segal San Francisco Holocaust memorial used as the cover of Quebec Francais (issue 165). Not being able to read French, I'm not entirely sure what the article is about but, hey! And I guess what could be considered to be a positive thing, my site is now established enough that spammers have noticed it and I had to block 17,000 file description postings for Viagra and whatever else.. Equipment this year: My mainstays were the Fuji S100fs, Nikon D7000, and the new Fuji X-S1. I also used an underwater Fuji XP50 and a Nikon D600. The first three cameras all broke this year and had to be repaired. Number of photos taken this year: just below 410,000.
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