Porphyry Copper Gold Ore - Under the Microscope
Well I'll start out by giving you the background on this rock sample. It comes from a section of New Brunswick where Gold and Copper deposits are being located on a yearly basis. This is an ore from a zone of Copper Porphyry which was located in southeastern New Brunswick. The overall grade of the ore was assayed at .35% copper and 600ppb AU or gold. This deposit is actually a project which myself and another prospector have been looking at over the last year. We found an outcrop while panning for gold in some of the streams along the Caledonia Highlands and stumbled across this little Gem. Hopefully you guys will enjoy the pictures I've taken under the microscrope. You will notice that the greenish hues tend to be copper where as some of the more bluish colors could represent minerals such as Bismuth or Chalcopyrite. Some of the little pieces you will see in the pictures do look like they might be micron gold. This could be possible but it is very hard to tell even under 175X magnification. One of the things that interferes with the identification is actually the light on the microscope. Minerals are better identified under natural light or ambient light, where they don't gain any color from reflections. However I'll let you all decided what you see, these samples are gold bearing so you never know until you get an assay!
