Have you ever looked at your watch and thought to yourself “man, this is just too legible”? Have you ever wanted to know what it would be like to try reading the time in a baffling and yet non-ironic way? Well, the new Meistersinger Astroscope could be just the watch for you! With a confusing dial featuring lots of windows and only one hand, we’re sure you’ll be perpetually captivated (or annoyed) by the newest watch on the block.
The Astroscope follows on from Meistersinger’s popular Lunascope watch which came out a couple of years back. The Lunascope features a smart-looking moonphase and date array which gives you quite a lot to look at, but it remained elegant to the eye. The new Astroscope seems to be a bit off a mess at first glance. The single hour hand remains unchanged, meaning it displays the time in five-minute increments over 12 hours. However, beneath that hand’s radius is where things start getting a bit odd.
The watch is actually a day-date watch, displayed in a fun way which requires the user to embark on an upward learning curve to figure it out. All the days of the week are written on the dial, but they also correspond with a symbol of the Roman calendar:
Diēs Sōlis (Sun) ☉ – Sunday
Diēs Lūnae (Moon) ☽ – Monday
Diēs Mārtis (Mars) ♂ – Tuesday
Diēs Mercuriī (Mercury) ☿ – Wednesday
Diēs Iovis (Jupiter) ♃ – Thursday
Diēs Veneris (Venus) ♀ – Friday
Diēs Saturnī (Saturn) ♄ – Saturday
Roughly translated, the word diēs means day and, in some cases, the word in Latin corresponds to the Gregorian calendar we use today, i.e. ‘diēs Sōlis’ translates to ‘day of the Sun’ which we call Sunday. You can also see the symbols for the male and female gender in the calendar which extend from the signs for Mars and Venus respectively (this, of course, links back to the Romans’ love of gods and other divine beings).
On each day, the spot next to the Roman symbol activates and thus shows the watch’s wearer the day of the week. It’s an exciting play on the complication that is known for being stuck between two formats (either with a subdial and a hand or a window similar to the date). There is also a date on the watch, which is useful.
Powering both variants of the new Astroscope is a Sellitta SW-220 movement which is visible through the open caseback. It beats at 4Hz, which is the modern standard, but it only has a 38-hour power reserve which is a little meagre. Luckily, Meistersinger has done everything it can to keep this watch on your wrist, or at least in your daily rotation. You can get it with either a blue or brown markers which contrast/match the leather strap respectively. The price for one of these is $2,295.
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