The watch brand most strongly associated with space is perhaps Omega. In 1969, the brand’s Speedmaster became the first watch worn on the Moon during the Apollo 11 moon landing. But the brand’s dalliance with space and the cosmos goes back a little further. Before the Speedmaster was introduced in 1957, the brand’s flagship had been the Constellation which was first launched in 1952.
It was a simpler time then. Before the quartz crisis or the massive expansion of luxury steel sports timepieces shifted paradigms, one of the chief concerns of watchmakers was inching each other out on accuracy in timekeeping. The Constellation watches by Omega take their name from the case back emblem: an observatory and eight stars. The observatory itself is the Kew Observatory, where Omega swept every category twice for its chronometer accuracy; two of the stars represent these sweeps, and six other first-place awards the brand won.
Call it a prescient bit of cosmic association. Otherwise, the historical importance of the movements of the stars and precise time measuring. This year, the Swiss brand is adding a vibrant and exclusive dimension to its Constellation collection. A range of 20 new models that feature uniquely coloured dials made, fittingly, from meteorite.
The source of this rare material is the Muonionalusta meteorite. Though fragments were first found in Sweden in 1906, this meteorite itself is the oldest known one on Earth with an age of over 4.5 billion. It’s an increasingly popular material for use in the dials of watches. Part of the reason is certainly the rarity. It’s said that the collective weight of all the meteorites known to exist on Earth is less than the gold mined and produced in a year.
Meteorite also comes with a truly unique look: a motif called the Widmanstätten pattern, which describes a pattern of faintly overlapping ribbon-like triangles and striations. It’s a unique feature of the mineral structures of meteorites which can only occur, quite literally, out of this world. And because it is a natural pattern, every piece of meteorite sliced to be used on a watch is unique.
For this new series of Constellation Meteorites, the brand has deployed its most advanced colour treatment technologies to add a vibrant dimension of choice. This means that the dials are offered not just in shades of grey, but a whole palette that also includes blue, green, yellow and rose gold, purple and white.
The lineup is offered in four sizes, with five options in each. The two largest are powered by Omega’s Co-Axial Master Chronometer-certified automatic self-winding movements. There’s a 41mm in stainless steel with ceramic or titanium bezels; or full Moonshine and Sedna gold, the brand’s trademarked alloys of yellow and rose gold. And there’s the 29mm with diamond-set bezels and indices; with cases in full steel, full gold, or steel-gold. The two smallest sizes in 28mm and 25mm, which come in the same configurations of diamonds and case materials as the 29mm, are powered by quartz movements.
