This “Astronomer’s Watch” Is a Beautiful Work of Craftsmanship

Watchmaking is an incredible mixture of engineering, machining, and artistry and those watches feature what are arguably the most intricate miniature mechanisms in common use. But watchmaking is also a very well-established profession and hobby, which means that we don’t often see new designs that stand out. There are, after all, only so many ways to display the time through mechanical means. But what if you were to expand the concept of timekeeping to a greater scale? That’s what Illusionmanager did with this “Astronomer’s Watch” that represents the entire solar system.

There are various astronomical watches available on the market, but they tend to exist on a spectrum from “tacky” to “wildly expensive.” The Astronomer’s Watch is neither and that took some clever engineering and packaging to pull off.

The Astronomer’s Watch represents six planets, plus the Sun. So, Uranus and Neptune aren’t part of the fun and Pluto wasn’t even a consideration. Upon activation, the planets do a little choreographed orbital dance that ends with them being in their actual astronomical positions — though, of course, it isn’t to scale and all of the orbits are circular.

The ingenious part is that all of that action only requires one tiny little stepper motor. The outermost planet (Saturn) can push up against the next (Jupiter) to nudge it into position. That continues all the way down the line to Mercury, so the watch can move all of the planets in sequence. A single input gear ring drives Saturn and the rest of the planets spin freely on discs, with just enough friction to keep them from wobbling around.

That performance is all controlled digitally and so Illusionmanager had to master miniaturization and packaging to pull it off. The enclosure came from a cheap mass-produced pocket watch, but the inner workings are custom. A Seeed Studio XIAO ESP32-C6 development board controls the micro stepper motor through a tiny Pololu STSPIN220 driver module and power comes from a little 100mAh lithium battery. An itty-bitty reed switch enables homing and pressing the watch’s crown closes a switch to activate the orbital dance.

The mechanical parts are a combination of 3D-printed plastic and handcrafted brass, mounting onto a 3D-printed frame that fits snugly in the pocket watch case. The planets are actually small stud earrings. The Sun, Mercury, and Venus are visible through the small window in the watch’s cover, but the other planets can’t be seen until it is open.

IllusionManager even implemented a method for entering the current date by tapping the button in a specific sequence — though it is probably easier to simply set it via USB with the serial tool.