Only 137 currently in stock.
**Ruby in Kyanite Sphere with Glow-in-the-Dark Stand — Fluoresces Bright Red Under 365nm UV!**
**$20 each**
Three minerals in one sphere — and one element steals the show. Chromium gives the ruby crystals their pink-to-red color AND makes them glow. Hit one of these spheres with a 365nm UV light and the rubies blaze bright red all over it, just like the photos — some of these spheres are so loaded with ruby the whole face lights up. In regular light it's a polished ball of blue kyanite and sparkly green fuchsite sprinkled with pink-to-magenta ruby crystals. Every sphere comes with a glow-in-the-dark 3D printed stand, so it displays as good as it glows.
**What it is:** Ruby is the red variety of corundum — the same mineral family as sapphire, and at Mohs 9 it's second only to diamond in hardness. The host rock here is kyanite, a blue aluminum silicate famous for having two different hardnesses (about 4.5 in one direction, 6.5 to 7 in the other), intergrown with fuchsite, a chromium-rich green variety of muscovite mica that gives the stone its sparkle. Ruby in kyanite is a metamorphic rock that formed deep in the Earth's crust, where aluminum-rich rock was squeezed and cooked under enormous pressure until ruby crystals grew scattered through the blue and green host.
**Where it's mined:** Most ruby in kyanite on the market, including these spheres, comes from southern India — mainly the metamorphic belts of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. India is one of the oldest ruby sources on Earth: rubies have been dug from Indian soil and traded there for over 2,000 years. The ruby-bearing rock is mined from small pits and shallow workings in deeply weathered ground, then the rough is cut and polished into spheres by Indian lapidaries.
**A little ruby history:** Ruby has been prized for thousands of years, and India is where much of that story starts. In ancient Sanskrit it was called *ratnaraj* — "king of precious stones" — and ancient Indian lapidary texts like the *Ratna Pariksha* were grading rubies by color and quality over a thousand years ago. Indian maharajas filled their treasuries with rubies, and India was famous for the stone centuries before the Burmese Mogok "Valley of Rubies" became known for its "pigeon's blood" red. Ruby is still July's birthstone and one of the four classic precious gems, alongside diamond, emerald, and sapphire. The chromium glow in these spheres isn't just pretty — in 1960 physicist Theodore Maiman used a ruby crystal's red fluorescence to build the world's first working laser. And fun fact: the famous "Black Prince's Ruby" in the British Crown Jewels turned out to be a red spinel — real rubies were so desirable that even kings got fooled.
**Please note:** This is NOT a Yooperlite — Yooperlites are fluorescent sodalite from Lake Superior and glow orange. This is a different fluorescent mineral from India, and it glows RED. It makes a great companion piece for any fluorescent collection, and a great way to show off what your 365nm light can do.
**Details:**
- Natural ruby in kyanite and fuchsite, polished sphere, from India
- Approximately 1 to 1.5 inches in diameter and 1 to 4 ounces each
- Includes a glow-in-the-dark 3D printed sphere stand — the stand itself glows teal-green under UV and after charging in light
- Every sphere is one of a kind — ruby coverage ranges from speckled to completely loaded, like the range shown in the photos. You'll receive one sphere from this batch, with its stand.
- Photos show the actual batch, in white light and under 365nm UV
**Care:** Handle with a little respect — the rubies are Mohs 9, but the kyanite and fuchsite host is much softer, so don't drop it on concrete. Keep it on its stand and wipe clean with a damp cloth.
