Today, on the first day of the Chinese New Year, the Ulysse Nardin Moonstruck replica watch is back, now known as the Ulysse Nardin Blast Moonstruck. The Moonstruck is completely redesigned, more complicated, more nuanced, and it’s great because it’s a really cool watch, but it’s perfect for all-day, year-round wear. There’s a lot to unpack.
Over the past few years, dominated by mind-numbing vintage re-releases and regurgitated 50th-anniversary releases, I suddenly realized that I hadn’t experienced a fairly common feeling when I got naughty into modern luxury watches in the late When the crazy Harry Winston Opus and Urwerk and Ulysse Nardin Freak watches were developed and launched. These are all amazing videos that take me into the miniature world of huge engineering challenges.
Then I watched this new video with Ludwig Oechslin talking about his concept for the Ulysse Nardin Moonstruck watch, both original and new for 2022. I found myself on the edge of my seat again, bursting out laughing as my system tried to vent its exhilarating unbelievable feeling. The point is that Moonstruck is back, and it’s still a watch monster that elicits such a real response.
Finding mathematical solutions in different forms is a challenge for me. The new Moonstruck has a number of readable displays that invite you to take a closer look and get involved. Today, I know how it works and I can make it myself – it’s still an absolute bomb. – Ludwig Oxlin
Here’s how the Ulysse Nardin Moonstruck works. The watch places the earth at its center and simulates the moon’s rotation around the earth, as well as the apparent “movement” of the sun around the earth. I wonder if this makes the Moonstruck the luxury watch of choice for flat earthers? Well… but seriously, the point here is to simulate the way the wearer sees the sun and moon from Earth – it’s that simple. In addition to reading popular moon phases associated with any location in the world, the Ulysse Nardin Blast Moonstruck allows the wearer to predict the date of spring tide at a glance by watching the sun and moon align on their respective ellipses. According to the manufacturer: “For Ludwig Oechslin, the designer of the astronomical watch in the 1980s, this was the most complicated astronomical watch ever built,
That said, as is often the case with ostensibly simple and user-friendly devices, the underlying engineering and conceptual solutions are very complex. Moonstruck is completely mechanical, and that’s where the gibberish begins, it provides a representation of the phases of the moon in a circular aperture located at the apogee of the ellipse (the point farthest from Earth in the moon’s orbit), depicting its orbit, out of For practical reasons, it is described as being on the same ecliptic plane as the Earth.
This disc-carried aperture is associated with an elaborate gear train (who couldn’t see it coming?). It makes the moon phase indicator make one full revolution per day to follow the movement of the sun (the source of the moon’s brightness) and keeps it at 29 days, 12 hours, 41 minutes and 9.3 seconds. This is approximately the duration of a lunar month, also known as a weather rotation, which has an astronomical duration of 29 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes, 2.9 seconds. To maintain accuracy, the aperture showing the moon recedes every 24 hours on its orbital circle by an angle, measured in degrees, corresponding to 1/29.53 of a lunar month, to occupy a new position relative to the sun. Lost? At the same time, the representation contained in this small moving aperture also evolves to appear brighter or darker as the lunar calendar changes. The aperture remains in the same position relative to the sun when part of the moon is visible in it.
The moon phase display is described as “precise” because it only produces a one-day deviation after 40 years of operation without any adjustment or reset, related to the marking of the moon’s age. It’s not the most accurate mechanical moon phase in the watch world, but it’s accurate enough. The sun is reproduced in relief, made of bronze stone, a rare and precious mineral in the pyroxene family, and its golden surface is dotted with black patches, designed to reproduce those observed with telescopes in the star’s mantle. Ulysse Nardin Moonstruck fake
No doubt reading Moonstruck’s various displays takes some getting used to – unless you’re an amateur or professional astronomer – but here at least there’s more to it than just the way the steel bracelet joins the steel Something to immerse you in the case.
Two buttons, a setup familiar to many Ulysse Nardin owners, are mounted on the left side of the case. These allow the hour hand to advance or retard instantaneously in one-hour increments while in flight. This comes in handy when traveling – and when switching to daylight saving time – as the hours displayed by the main time can easily be adjusted to the traveler’s current time zone without disrupting all other indications. There is also a city ring and a 24-hour display that functions as a world time display. This remains the same when the pusher is used to beat the main hour hand.
In order to highlight this feeling of being in the center of the universe, based on the observation of the watch, the designers of Ulysse Nardin, together with the master Ludwig Oechslin, chose to place the watch in the part of the northern hemisphere seen from the North Pole center of. Sapphire crystal for instruments. For a true 3D effect, a dome crystal with land masses micro-engraved inside is set in (note, boxed) sapphire crystal and framed by an 18k rose gold ring engraved with 31 days of the month. One with A small white triangular pointer of luminescent material protrudes from below the earth and points back to the 31-day scale.
The cheap Ulysse Nardin UN-106 manufacture movement breathes life into all this celestial madness. Self-winding movement with a power reserve of 50 hours and running at a frequency of 4 Hz – more modern frequencies are more suitable for precision in everyday wear and are therefore ideal for this watchmaking exercise. The UN-106 movement consists of 335 components, 42 jewels, and displays hours, minutes, date, moon phase, lunar month day, tide coefficient, world time and dual time, as well as the observed position of the sun and moon around worldwide. The movement is showcased by a sapphire crystal and black DLC titanium caseback (the rest of the case is ceramic, more on that later) and features a solid 22kt gold rotor for the self-winding system. Oh, (spoiler alert) if you look at the coordinates etched into the case back,
The case itself is the Ulysse Nardin Blast design we detail and discuss here. Essentially, it’s special in that it uses seemingly impossible angles on its lugs – in the sense that it’s impossible that they “shouldn’t” have alternating finishes – yet , they do. To read about the neat solution to making this unique case design work, read the article we just linked to. The black ceramic case is nearly scratch-resistant — unless you’re traveling in a diamond mine — and it’s light and comfortable to wear. We don’t have exact numbers on the thickness, but it’s clear that despite its multi-layer construction, the Blast Moonstruck is still the perfect wearable watch, no thicker than your average automatic chronograph.
A very positive and powerful sense of monumentality and horological deterrent emanates from the proportions and colour scheme of the Ulysse Nardin Blast Moonstruck. This is a very confident watch – not surprising if you’ve just listened to Oechslin’s talk and learned about Ulysse Nardin’s watchmaking style. The Moonstruck is not only the flagship watch of the brand, but also the flagship of modern Swiss watchmaking, as it takes the most poetic complication (astronomical) and places it boldly and confidently at the center of the watch – while not Sacrificing legibility time and wearing comfort is not yet another art form in high-end watchmaking.
Personally, I’m delighted that Moonstruck and Ludwig Oechslin are back — in fact, I’ve been looking forward to, or rather, hoped for, it’s return in recent years. I don’t see this in the Blast formula, but it seems to be designed for this complication.
