Ulysse Nardin | Fly me to the Moon!

As a new lunar year has begun, Ulysse Nardin is launching an ultra design version of one of its historical astronomical complications, the Moonstruck. With this Manufacture Worldtimer housed in the geometrical case of a Blast, the watch Maison offers exceptional aficionados a new celestial odyssey.

This new Blast, descended from the trilogy of astronomical watches created nearly forty years ago by the watchmaker Ludwig Oechslin, proposes to set in motion the primordial elements of the visible celestial mechanisms so that everyone can gain a poetic understanding of the universe that envelops us thanks to a contemporary and intuitive display.

The Blast Moonstruck reproduces the Moon’s rotation, the apparent movement of the Sun around the globe as we observe it from Earth and a tidal chart. Designed to make this dance between the Sun and the Moon intelligible and intensely poetic, the geocentric display of this timepiece is easy to understand, even for a beginner with no knowledge of astronomy.

Explanations
The starry firmament is a map for sailors, a playground for lovers and the primordial calendar of all civilisations. In this spark-ling ballet where, as seen from the ground, Earth always appears to be at the center of the universe, the Sun and Moon define the cycles of the days, months and seasons. It took the genius of astronomers to decipher this waltz that keeps time so well. Ever since the Bronze Age, they have been setting up observatories that enable them to devise calendars that are accurate to the nearest day. Over the generations, they have built up their grammar of the heavens.

Attractive astronomy
The Blast Moonstruck, like all watches incorporating elaborated astronomical information, seeks to be a miniaturised extrapolation of the formidable turret clocks constructed towards the end of the Middle Ages by towns of consequence. With an easily readable and understandable display, it is the successor of the astronomical instruments of the past. Thanks to its sophisticated mechanism, it provides a display of the time in a place chosen from among the 24 principal time zones that the world has been using since the Washington Convention of 1884. By means of pushers located on the left-hand side of the case, it is possible to move the main time display forward or back in leaps of one hour to adjust to another time zone.

This timepiece is also fitted with a a high-precision moon-phase complication which – combined with the complication serving to keep real-time track of the Sun which gives Earth’s satellite its glow – adds relief and life to the dial. This scientific representation of considerable dreamlike potential will serve the cause of great leaders in search of the ultimate watch, but also that of sailors, with whom the Manufacture has cultivated an almost intimate relationship since its establishment in 1846. They will know the full extent of the benefits this understated and discreet display can bring them. From day to day, they will be able to predict the dates of the spring tides at a glance by observing the Sun and Moon aligning on their respective ellipses.

Man at the center of his universe
Designed to follow in the footsteps of the fabulous trilogy devised by Ludwig Oechslin from 1985, this watch puts aside the Copernican representation of our solar system in favour of a geocentric approach that is easier to read and understand for us, the inhabitants of Earth.

To accentuate this sensation of being at the heart of the universe based on observation of the watch, the designers, together with Ludwig Oechslin, chose to place the part of the northern hemisphere seen from the North Pole at the centre of the instrument’s sapphire crystal. To increase the impact of the 3D effect, the domed crystal, with the land masses micro-engraved on the inside, is set in the protective sapphire crystal box encircled by an 18 ct rose gold ring engraved with the 31 days of the month, bearing a triangular pointer enhanced with luminescent material.

Worldtime - Dual Time
Gliding accurately beneath this three-dimensional structure are hands reflecting the characteristically contemporary design of the Blast collection.  Their tapering form ensures instinctive reading, even in total darkness, thanks to the presence of a generous quantity of luminescent material down the middle. They indicate the local time, set to the time of the time zone in which the watch’s owner lives. But they can also be set at will to any one of 24 time zones for which the names of corresponding cities are reproduced on the fixed dial flange. This can be done, forwards or backwards, by means of a sophisticated mechanism and activated by the two rectangular pushers located on the left side of the case. This simple and intuitive world time function, always useful for seasoned travelers, is paired with an advanced astronomical complication.

Geocentric cosmic waltz
For Ludwig Oechslin, who during the 1980s designed some of some of the most complex astronomical wristwatches ever produced, and for the Manufacture’s development team, the Moonstruck was not intended to be an unnecessarily complicated watch, but a timepiece with an understated and efficient display, capable of rendering the celestial mechanics comprehensible to everyone.

This 45mm-diameter astronomical watch in black ceramic and black DLC-treated tintaium – paired with an alligator leather, velvet or rubber strap – undoubtedly meets the expectations of this ambitious project.

In addition to the time display observable against a background of the night-sky portrayed by a disc made of aventurine, times around the world can be read with the aid of the fixed flange bearing the names of cities and the rotating disk on which a sun in relief and the time indications appear at 12 o’clock.

The watch also has a Dual Time mechanism. This allows changing of the main display in leaps of full hours with the aid of the two pushers located on the left side of the case middle to show the time in a given country on the dial while keeping the initial time alongside the reference city. This highly efficient watch also possesses an aperture which, while providing a realistic display of the moon phases, is associated with a 3D depiction of the sun appearing at 12 o’clock on the reference time zone indication.

Precise moon phases
The team in charge of the creation of the Moonstruck chose to provide a representation of the moon phases in a round aperture located at the apogee of an ellipse portraying its orbit, which is depicted as being in the same ecliptic plane as Earth for practical reasons. This aperture, carried by a disc, is associated with an elaborate gear train. It causes the moon-phase indicator to make one complete rotation per day to follow the course of the Sun, the source of the Moon’s brightness, and also causes it to make a full circle of the dial in 29 days, 12 hours,
41 minutes and 9.3 seconds, representing the duration of a lunar month, also known as a synodic rotation, which has an astronomical duration of 29 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes and 2.9 seconds.

To conserve its accuracy, the aperture showing the representation of the moon retreats every 24 hours on its circle of revolution by an angle corresponding, in degrees, to 1/29.53 of a lunar month in order to occupy a new position in relation to the Sun. At the same time, the representation contained in this small mobile aperture also evolves to appear a little brighter or dimmer in line with the lunar calendar.

When a portion of the Moon is visible in it, the aperture maintains for 24 hours an identical position in relation to the Sun, here reproduced in relief and made of bronzite. This rare and precious mineral of the pyroxenes family presents a golden surface punctuated with dark patches intended to reproduce those observable with a telescope on the mantle of the daystar around which the Earth gravitates. The “precision” moon-phase display, thus described because it will produce a divergence of one day only after 40 years in operation, is associated with markings of the ages of the Moon on the ellipsis intended to represent the revolution of our natural satellite around the Earth.

The appealing and original Blast Moonstruck nonetheless embodies a certain vision of our solar system – somewhere in the vastness of the cosmos.

Complex in appearance, it is easy to read and also to adjust, as all the information can be set via the winding crown. A little concentration when correctly positioning all the useful information, from the reference city to the local time and date, is enough to ensure that the complication built into the automatic Manufacture caliber UN-106 subsequently manages all the displays on its own as long as the watch is worn. And when it is not, it just needs to be put back in the box supplied, which contains an automatic winder designed to take care of the winding and keep its calendar information accurate.

Aventurine: nothing happens “by chance”
While it may appear that the stars are randomly distributed in the cosmos, the Blast Moonstruck’s subtle mineral black dial decoration with glittering golden particles has not been left “to chance”…

Legend surrounding aventurine recounts that in the thirteenth century, on the island of Murano in Venice, home to the famous glass-makers, a craftsman accidentally, or “by chance” (a ventura in Italian), let some copper filings fall into a pot of molten glass, so creating aventurine glass, or avventurina in Italian.

The aventurine effect of this man-made mineral gives it the sparkling appearance that sailors often observe on the ocean’s surface in the darkness of night.

Ludwig Oechslin
This engineer was born in Gabicce Mare in the Italian Marches on 10 February 1952. He obtained a degree in archeology, ancient history and Greek from the University of Basel in 1976. His academic career was thus launched and in 1983 he was also awarded a PhD in Philosophy, History of Research and Erudition (theoretical physics) and Astronomy, this time from the University of Bern, and in 1995 a habilitation in pre-industrial technical archeology from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETHZ).

In parallel to his many studies, he undertook a watchmaking apprenticeship and became a repairer in 1984 and then a master watchmaker in 1993. Having acquired all these skills, and like the humanists of the early Renaissance, he managed to combine all these disciplines into creating watch movements which included original astronomical complications or incorporated innovative modes of operation. From 1983 to 1990, he developed the Astrolabium Galileo Galilei watch for Ulysse Nardin, followed by two other pieces to form a Trilogy that has remained in the annals of the profession as the benchmark in terms of astronomical complications. Passionate about mechanical efficiency, this author – who won the Prix Gaïa in history for his work on monumental astronomical clocks – created the Freak watch in 2001, the first in the history of horology to incorporate silicon into its mechanism.

A lover of knowledge, he was curator of the International Watchmaking Museum of La Chaux-de-Fonds from 2001 to 2014. Simultaneously, this adventurous spirit eager to give life to the watchmaking principles running through his veins founded his own watch brand in 2006, naming it ochs und junior. Today, still bubbling with ideas, this omniscient engineer, researcher and developer-design remains open to the mysteries of the horological constellation whose brilliance he continues to enhance with his own unique touches.