Honest Pulsar Topaz

Latin honestus, honorable — used as a color modifier since the seventeenth century for hues that read as straightforward and unembellished, the working browns and grays of vernacular architecture rather than the polished shades of court fashion. Honest brown, honest gray: moderate saturation combined with optical directness. Sits at the crisp-bucket alongside plain and frank.

Coined 1968, pulsating-radio-star. As a color modifier, pulsar implies a rotating-neutron-star-and-pulse-beam quality, the visual register of Crab-pulsar-and-Vela-pulsar hand-rotating-neutron-star-and-pulse-beam Crab-pulsar-and-Vela-and-PSR-1919 pulsar-and-rotating-neutron-star-and-pulse-beam surfaces under Crab-pulsar-and-Vela-and-PSR-1919 millisecond-and-radio-and-X-ray neutron-star-light. Sits at the modifier-and-cosmic end of the grid, parallel to nova and mira in usage.

A fluorine aluminum silicate gem, hardness 8 on the Mohs scale, mined for centuries in Ouro Preto, Brazil. Imperial topaz is the prized variety: a warm, slightly pink-shifted gold-orange with the high refractive index of a quality cut stone. Cooler than amber, brighter than honey, with the gem's signature internal fire when held to light. Named for the island of Topazos in the Red Sea, though that source produced peridot instead.