Octarine

[bloodyrosemccoy]

You know you’re a serious science fiction writer when you find yourself wondering how to look up just what trace impurities in a gemstone would give it an ultraviolet color—so it’d appear colorless to us but be brilliantly shaded to some other species with a different visible spectrum.

Yes, dudes, I take this stuff seriously.

Granted, this may stem from when I was a kid and I would try my damndest to imagine completely new colors. I don’t think it ever quite worked, but I sure did work at it. But it turns out it’s not for lack of wiring, so there’s still hope!

Comments

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Thanks! Yeah, scheelite shows up in my book as an "unusual" gemstone because it's too soft to cut. (The book doesn't mention the sky blue part--cool! It doesn't necessarily need to look like any color we might know, either--it may be another color entirely. But I'll definitely write down "tungsten" and "molybdenum" for future reference!)

As for the moon, I considered a surface rock with high iron content, but I'm worried it'd be too orange. The problem is that I'm looking for a seriously pink moon--rose or raspberry color, something taking its first steps along the scale toward purple. I've found minerals the color I want, but trying to figure out if they would work as the surface of an entire moon. I had considered some manganese compounds, which can provide the pink color--but once again, I'm not sure if I could cover a moon with even a thinnish layer with any degree of real probability, since I have no idea how rare they are. (It's possible this moon can be viewed as an interesting rarity, but I still want it in the realm of the possible.) My best possibility, I think, is making the moon's past include some violent volcanic activity.

Or maybe I'm not making any sense. The life of a writer, I guess--you gotta try to be an expert on everything, and it doesn't always work.

[agenttrojie.livejournal.com]

No, you make absolute sense. I'll do some more digging for you as to likely candidates for pink surface rocks. But as it's a moon, I'm guessing no past atmosphere, no hydrosphere? So hydroxides, carbonates etc are probably out? Volcanic activity's probably your best bet. In which case, you could have, say, a rhyolite with a really high K-spar content ...

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Ooh, that might work!

I'm thinking it started out with a thin atmosphere which gradually degraded, and there may be some ice that used to be liquid in the deeper crevices, so there could be a certain amount of carbonates or hydroxides.

[agenttrojie.livejournal.com]

I'll get on it when I'm home :D it sounds like fun. But a good moonwide rhyolitic catastrophe could be entertaining ...

[http://users.livejournal.com/_wastrel/]

I'll do some more digging
Was that intentional or incidental?

[agenttrojie.livejournal.com]

Incidental ... but yay, pun :P