CELESTINE, or CELESTITE

This article appears in Volume V05, Page 600 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: CAU-CHA

CELESTINE, or CELESTITE , a name applied to native strontium sulphate (SrSO4), having been suggested by the

celestial

CELESTIAL, OR STELLAR

blue colour which it occasionally presents. This colour has been referred to a trace of iron phosphate, but in some cases such an explanation appears doubtful. The

mineral

MINERAL

is usually colourless, or has only a delicate shade of blue. Celestine crystallizes in the orthorhombic system, being isomorphous with barytes (q.v.). The

angle

ANGLE (from the Lat. angulus, a corner, a diminutive, of which the primitive form, angus, does not occur in Latin; cognate are the Lat. angere, to compress into a bend or to strangle, and the Gr. ayKOS, a bend; both connected with the Aryan root ank-, to

between the prism faces is 76 17'. The cleavage is perfect parallel to the basal pinacoid, and less marked parallel to the prism. Although celestine much resembles barytes in its physical properties, having for example the same degree of hardness (3), it is less dense, its specific gravity being 3.9. Celestine is a less abundant

mineral

MINERAL

than barytes. It is, however, much more soluble, and occurs frequently in mineral waters. W. W. Stoddart showed that many plants growing on Keuper marls containing celestine near Bristol appropriated the strontium salt, and the metal could be detected spectroscopically in their ashes.
Celestine occurs in the Triassic rocks of Britain, especially in veins and geodes in the Keuper marl in the neighbourhood of Bristol. At Wickwar and Yate in Gloucestershire it is worked for industrial purposes. Colourless crystals, of

great

GREAT

beauty, occurin association with calcite and native

sulphur

SULPHUR

in the

sulphur

SULPHUR

deposits of Sicily, as at Girgenti. Fine blue crystals are yielded by the copper mines of Herrengrund, in

Hungary

HUNGARY
HUNGARY (Hungarian Magyarorszdg)

; a dark blue fibrous form is known from Jena; and small crystals occur in flint at Meudon near Paris. Very large tabular crystals are found in limestone on Strontian

Island

ISLAND (O.E. ieg =isle, +land')

in Lake Erie; and a blue fibrous variety from near Frankstown, Blair Co., Penn., is notable as having been the

original

ORIGINAL

celestine on which the species was founded by A. G. Werner in 1798.
Celestine is much used for the preparation of strontium hydrate, which is employed in refining beetroot

sugar

SUGAR

in Germany. The mineral is used also as a source of various salts of strontium such as the nitrate, which finds application in pyrotechny for the production of red fire. (F. W. R.*)

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