Onyx

Onyx is a banded variety of the oxide mineral chalcedony. Agate and onyx are both varieties of layered chalcedony that differ only in the form of the bands: agate has curved bands and onyx has parallel bands. The colors of its bands range from white to almost every color (save some shades, such as purple or blue). Commonly, specimens of onyx contain bands of black and/or white.

Etymology

Onyx comes through Latin (of the same spelling), from the Greek ὄνυξ, meaning "claw" or "fingernail". With its fleshtone color, onyx can be said to resemble a fingernail. The English word "nail" is cognate with the Greek word.

Varieties

Onyx is formed of bands of chalcedony in alternating colors. It is cryptocrystalline, consisting of fine intergrowths of the silica minerals quartz and moganite. Its bands are parallel to one another, as opposed to the more chaotic banding that often occurs in agates.

Sardonyx is a variant in which the colored bands are sard (shades of red) rather than black. Black onyx is perhaps the most famous variety, but is not as common as onyx with colored bands. Artificial treatments have been used since ancient times to produce both the black color in "black onyx" and the reds and yellows in sardonyx. Most "black onyx" on the market is artificially colored.

Onyx (Pop Evil album)

Onyx is a rock opera and the fourth studio album by Pop Evil. It was released on May 14, 2013. The first single, "Trenches", was released February 28, 2013. The album was available for streaming a day before its official release date. It was produced by Johnny K, mixed by Jay Ruston, and mastered by Paul Logus. Additional vocal production was performed by Dave Bassett. Additional programming was done by Bassett and Matt Doughtery.

The album debuted on the Billboard 200 at No. 39, No. 9 on the Independent Albums chart, with 10,000 copies sold in its first week. It has sold 122,000 copies in the United States as of July 2015.

Track listing

Charts

Album

Singles

Band

References

External links

USS Onyx (PYc-5)

USS Onyx (PYc-5), was a diesel coastal patrol yacht of the United States Navy during World War II.

The ship was built in 1924 as Janey III by Consolidated Shipbuilding Corp. of Morris Heights, New York, and was subsequently renamed Rene and Pegasus.

Purchased by the Navy on 3 December 1940 from Clifford C. Hemphill, of New York City, converted to Navy use and named Onyx, she was classified as a coastal yacht on 13 December 1940, and commissioned on 27 February 1941.

Service history

After conversion she departed New York for Norfolk, arriving on 22 March. Sailing again, she reached New Orleans on 5 April to report for duty to Commandant 8th Naval District. Onyx performed services for ComEight as a coastal patrol vessel around the Gulf area until January 1942. On 22 January she departed Key West, Florida to return to New York and arrived there on 31 January.

Onyx was again ordered to report to the 8th Naval District at New Orleans and was underway by 13 March, arriving on 27 March. She resumed services and continued in this capacity until February 1944 when she was extensively damaged in a collision. Beyond economic repair, her ordnance was removed and she was placed out of commission, in service, retaining her name and designation, on 15 May 1944. She was designated a target vessel on 31 May, the same year, and made available for disposition on 31 October.

Nocturnal (web series)

Nocturnal is a supernatural serial drama in the tradition of the classic Dark Shadows and the more recent NBC serial Passions. The series premiered on the internet in March 2007, and new webisodes continue to appear every month on its eponymous web site.

Plot synopsis

Shot on location in and around Pittsburgh, PA, (though the city has never been explicitly named) the series revolves around the mysterious circumstances surrounding the murder of a young woman named Natalie Brew (who, curiously enough, has never appeared in a single webisode).

Not unlike Twin Peaks, the identity of Natalie's killer is one of the series' overarching mysteries. And, as police investigators Archer Reilly and Sarah Pennington discover, there is no shortage of suspects. Did she run afoul of the wealthy and powerful Hawthorne family—led by its patriarch Jebediah—whose power came as a result of dealings with dark forces? Or was she another in the seemingly endless victims of Dr. Ulrich Von Der Linn, a vampire masquerading as a hypnotherapist?

Nocturnal (novel)

Nocturnal is a novel and podcast by author Scott Sigler. The novel was originally released in 2007 in podcast format, with a print format releasing in 2012 by Crown Publishing with some elements from the original version altered.

Plot

The book is set in San Francisco and is narrated from multiple perspectives, largely that of Bryan Clauser, a homicide detective known for his calm, cold demeanor. This is in stark contrast to the personality of his partner Lawrence "Pookie" Chang, who spends much of his time making wise-cracks and writing the series bible for a TV series he's developing. The two come across a series of ritualistic murders that appear to be initially unconnected but eventually prove to be related to a teenager by the name of Rex Deprovdechuk. During all of the murders Bryan and Rex both have a series of dreams where they see bizarre, monstrous people murdering the victims in the name of an as yet unknown king. Unbeknownst to the others, the monsters have kidnapped multiple individuals including the homeless junkie Aggie James.

Nocturnal (instrument)

A nocturnal is an instrument used to determine the local time based on the relative positions of two or more stars in the night sky. Sometimes called a "horologium nocturnum" (time instrument for night) or nocturlabe (in French and occasionally used by English writers), it is related to the astrolabe and sun dial. Knowing the time is important in piloting for calculating tides and some nocturnals incorporate tide charts for important ports.

Even if the nightly course of the stars has been known since antiquity, the mentions of a dedicated instrument for its measurement are not found before the Middle Ages. The earlier image presenting the use of a nocturnal is in a manuscript dated from the 12th century.Raymond Lull repeatedly described the use of a sphaera horarum noctis ou astrolabium nocturnum.

With Martín Cortés de Albacar's book Arte de Navegar, published in 1551 the name and the instrument gained a larger popularity

It was described also c. 1530 by Peter Apianus in his Cosmographicus Liber republished later by Gemma Frisius with a widely circulated illustration of the instrument while being used by an observer.