Star watches

WITH worldly woes commanding attention such as a deadly virus, war and a climate meltdown, the distant galaxy has fallen under the radar of earthly beings. So it’s refreshing to be reminded by 3 new watches with celestial themes that there’s still a world beyond us.

 DB25 Starry Varius Aerolite

The face of this watch, a high frequency and high speed tourbillon with precise dead-beat seconds by independent watchmaker De Bethune, is made of blue and polished meteorites. In the original model - the award-winning DB25 Chronometre Tourbillon Starry Varius Titanium launched in 2019 - the starry sky with its Milky Way was depicted on earthly material (titanium). In the new version, the mesmerising scene reappears on iron and nickel forged out of this world —on fragments of the Muonionalusta Meteorite that fell to earth over a million years ago, before the Christian era, to be precise.

The Muonionalusta Meteorite, named after the Muniona river between Finland and Sweden where it landed, is probably the world’s oldest known meteorite to date.

But like the earlier gravity-defying timepiece, the 42-millimetre wide case of the watch is made of ultra-light titanium and encases an in-house hand-winding movement with power reserve of 4 days. Only 5 watches will be produced a year. Price: S$400,000.

Navitimer B02 Chronograph 41 Cosmonaute Limited Edition

Omega may brag about building the first watch to land on the moon, but that was 7 years later than the first watch to leave Earth. Earlier in 1962, Breitling put the “first Swiss wristwatch in space”. (Previously it was a Swiss pocket stopwatch.) This year marks the 60th anniversary of the day when astronaut Scott Carpenter orbited the Earth 3 times while wearing Breitling’s Navitimer Cosmonaute during his Mercury-Atlas 7 mission.

“The watch had been Carpenter’s personal request, a variation on the iconic aviator’s watch he’d encountered in his flight days, but with a 24-hour dial to tell day from night in space,” according to Breitling. The Cosmonaute bears all the hallmarks of the brand’s aviation icon: the circular slide rule for performing mathematical calculations; the Aircraft Owners and Pilot Association “wings” logo; and the trio of chronograph sub-dials. What distinguishes it is its ability to tell 24-hour time. The anniversary watch in stainless steel is almost a replica of the watch on Carpenter’s wrist when he was navigating the space shuttle, save for subtle updates to give it a modern-retro appeal. This includes a platinum bezel, a premium touch that makes the watch even more of a collector’s piece. Engraved on the case-back is “First Swiss wristwatch in space”.   

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The new Cosmonaute is limited to 362 pieces, a recognition of the spacecraft’s circumnavigations of the Earth and the year of the mission. Price: S$16,350 (bracelet), S$15,850 (crocodile strap).

Astronomia Tourbillon Bucherer BLUE

This new watch is one-of-a-kind, and was the first triple axis tourbillon to go into space. It returned for a fundraising auction to benefit the Davidson Institute of Science Education, an Israeli non-profit organisation. The gravity-defying timepiece was specially made by private watchmaker Jacob & Co for the Axiom Space Mission from Jul 19 to Apr 25 this year. The Astronomy Tourbillon Bucherer BLUE was worn by Eytan Stibbe, an impact investor and leader of the 4-person Israeli-designed Rakia space mission.

Produced in collaboration with Bucherer BLUE, the Swiss watch retailer Bucherer’s “platform for bringing to life daring projects with innovative partners”, the watch runs on a complex movement built around a gravitational triple axis tourbillon. It features 4 satellites spinning in constant motion - the dial, tourbillon cage, a spherical diamond that reflects the moon and a magnesium lacquered globe representing Earth. It was placed on auction by Sotheby’s on Jul 26.