Lustre (or luster) is the way light interacts with the surface of a crystal, rock, or mineral. The word traces its origins back to the latin lux, meaning "light", and generally implies radiance, gloss, or brilliance.
A range of terms are used to describe lustre, such as earthy, metallic, greasy, and silky. Similarly, the term vitreous (derived from the Latin for glass, vitrum) refers to a glassy lustre. A list of these terms is given below.
Lustre varies over a wide continuum, and so there are no rigid boundaries between the different types of lustre. (For this reason, different sources can often describe the same mineral differently. This ambiguity is further complicated lustre's ability to vary widely within a particular mineral species.) The terms are frequently combined to describe intermediate types of lustre (for example, a "vitreous greasy" lustre).
Some minerals exhibit unusual optical phenomena, such as asterism (the display of a star-shaped luminous area) or chatoyancy (the display of luminous bands, which appear to move as the specimen is rotated). A list of such phenomena is given below.
Famous quotes containing the word lustre:
“How much on outward show does all depend,
If virtues from within no lustre lend!
Strip off th’externals M and Y, the rest
Proves Majesty itself is but a Jest.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)