How High the Moon" Arnold & Son Luna Magna Features Watch World’s Largest 3D Moon-Phase
Arnold & Son has mastered many high complications but has become particularly lauded for its striking, photorealistic moon-phase displays, the most recent showcased in last year’s Perpetual Moon Obsidian. This year, at Watches & Wonders, the Swiss manufacture named for 18th Century British horologist John Arnold elevated its lunar savoir faire to a new, record-setting level with the Luna Magna, which boasts the largest 3D moon ever built into a wristwatch.
The spherical moon that dominates the lower dial of the Luna Magna combines one hemisphere of marble, for the light side of the moon, and the other of aventurine glass, for the dark side; neither material has ever been used to create a 3D moon for a watch. It measures a substantial 12 mm in diameter and floats inside an aventurine dial that depicts a star-filled midsummer sky. How does this voluminous lunar globe fit within the relatively modest dimensions of a luxury timepiece" It is positioned perfectly between the top and bottom of the movement, with its upper part enclosed in a domed section of the sapphire crystal; the design is repeated on the lower side of the watch, in which another sapphire glass rests in the small of the wrist. Measuring from one sapphire dome to the other, the case’s total thickness is only 15.9 mm.
Above the gigantic moon-phase is an off-centered, white-lacquered subdial on which the current hour and minute are displayed by blued hands on Roman numera...
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