#rock texture
- Aerolitiform — Having the appearance, shape, structure, or chemical composition similar to that of an aerolite (stony meteorite); it refers specifically to mineral fragments, rocks, or terrestrial metallo-granular masses that exhibit textural characteristics similar to cosmic bodies that have crashed onto Earth.
- Allotriomorphism — A property, state, or structural phenomenon characteristic of certain minerals or igneous rocks, consisting of the development of crystals lacking their own geometric faces or a native regular outer shape. This mineralogical process occurs when crystal growth is mechanically constrained and limited by the remaining free spaces between other mineral components solidified previously within the mass of the same magmatic melt.
- Astralite rock — A rare technical neologism used to describe a microstructural variety of metamorphic rock or silicate mineral with fine crystalline inclusions, which reflects light in a brilliant manner reminiscent of star dust or the night vault. In niche petrographic studies, the term indicates the textural property of certain ornamental rocks to present intense pseudo-sidereal reflections under polarized light.
- Automorphic — Regarding minerals or crystals, having their own regular, well-developed geometric shapes, bounded by plane crystalline faces reflecting the internal symmetrical structure of the atomic lattice, without being modified or restricted by space constraints from neighboring minerals. In petrography, the term describes the first minerals that separate and solidify from an igneous melt, having full freedom of structural growth within the fluid residual liquid.