Detailed information
Species
Native Selenium
Dimensions
45 x 74 x 45
mm
Weight
62 g
Locality
Anna mine, Alsdorf Aachen, Cologne North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany
Condition
No recorded repairs
Native Selenium, or selenium metal, is rarely crystallized in nature, but one of its most important modes of occurrence is as a byproduct of the burning of coal tips such as in the case of lightning strikes. One of the most famous European occurrences is that of Anna mine at Alsdorf, near Aachen, Cologne, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany where bright metallic dark grey acicular to prismatic microcrystals of Native Selenium occur on the surface of a greyish-white sinter-like rock. This small cabinet-sized example from Anna mine, from the Francis Coune Collection (Belgium) is liberally carpeted in excellent microcrystals of Native Selenium and represents a really fine demonstration of what pure selenium metal looks like as crystals.
