The Naica mine in Chihuahua, Mexico, with its enormous gypsum crystals,
may well be called the "Queen of the Giant Crystals localities." Though
the Naica mine is no show mine, but still a working lead-zinc mine hosted
in layered limestones, the first of several crystal caves was discovered
in 1910. This "Cave of the Swords" contained extraordinary large
sword-like selenite (gypsum) crystals up to 2 m long. In 2000 another
crystal cave system was discovered at 300 m depth, even more spectacular
than the original cave. Inside were free growing gypsum crystals up to 12
m long and 2 m in diameter. The ASTER image uses SWIR bands 4, 6, and 8 in
RGB. Limestone is displayed in yellow-green colors, vegetation is red.
The image was acquired February 16, 2004, covers an area of 26 x 23.5 km,
and is located near 27.8 degrees north latitude, 105.5 degrees west
longitude. The photo of crystals was taken from: http://www.thatcrystalsite.com/.
The U.S. science team is located at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
Pasadena, Calif. The Terra mission is part of NASA's Science Mission
Directorate.
