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Appearance
Red jasper is a fine-grained stone, with its red coloring from iron oxides. Red jasper sometimes has streaks of other colors, such as yellow, brown or green. Red jasper with white or gray circular patterns is called orbicular jasper. When polished, jasper takes on a smooth appearance. In most pieces of jasper, it has the appearance of veins in the stone.
Chemical Composition
Jasper is a type of quartz, specifically a mixture of regular quartz, chalcedony and opal. It is made of one part silicon to two parts oxygen. Jasper has a trigonal crystal structure, which means that the stone has one vertical axis with three folds and three horizontal axes of equal length. The vertical axis is a different length than the three horizontal axes.
Other Physical Properties
Red jasper has a hardness of 6-1/2 to 7 on the Mohs scale of hardness. It is a mostly opaque stone, meaning that you cannot see through it. The stone can appear anywhere between vitreous, or glass-like, to waxy on the luster scale. Jasper is a tough stone and is resistant to fracture. However, when it does fracture, it has a conchoidal, or shell-like, fracture.
Sources
Jasper can be found all over the world in multiple colors, from the United States to Kazakhstan and Russia. However, in India and Venezuela, only the red variety of jasper can be found. Jasper has also been discovered in Australia, Madagascar, Egypt, Chile, Sweden, the United Kingdom and several other countries.