Van Cleef & Arpels introduces a watch that keeps time on a astronomical scale. In fact, you’ll be carrying an entire planetarium around on your wrist. The Midnight Planétarium is part of their Poetic Complications line of watches that make mechanical animation the focus of a watch.
This new Poetic Complication timepiece provides a miniature representation of the movement of six planets around the sun and their position at any given time. Earth and Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn are set in motion thanks to a self-winding mechanical movement of great complexity: equipped with an exclusive module developed in partnership with the Maison Christiaan van der Klaauw, it contains 396 separate parts. The movement of each planet is true to its genuine length of orbit: it will take Saturn over 29 years to make a complete circuit of the dial, while Jupiter will take almost 12 years, Mars 687 days, Earth 365 days, Venus 224 days and Mercury 88 days.
And if you want to know what time it is, there’s a real 24-hour watch around the outside edge of the watch face. How much does the Midnight Planétarium cost? The sales page does not say, because if you have to ask, you can’t afford it. Based on what other watches in the collection cost, you could buy a house instead. If you had the money. -via Metafilter