A watch for C-3PO – the Zodiac Astrographic Limited Edition

Sean Ding

The recent anniversary of the moon landing saw my Instagram feed explode with Speedmaster wrist shots, and an overwhelming number of watch brands releasing special edition watches to commemorate the event. But when the new Zodiac Astrographic Limited Edition somehow beat the algorithm and made its way onto the top of my explore feed, I was immediately intrigued.

While most moon-landing-anniversary watches tend to be retrospective, celebrating the glory days of space exploration, the Astrographic Limited Edition distinguishes itself for also being future-looking. The seconds hand, designed to resemble an orbiting Mars, represents an ideological shift to the next frontier of space exploration.

This is not your typical ‘moon watch’. In this observer’s humble opinion, none of the other moon watches is particularly … well … space-y. Forgive me for the potential heresy I am about to commit, but as iconic as the Speedmaster may be in the context of space exploration, it doesn’t quite take me back to my childhood days of doodling spaceships and aliens on freshly painted walls.

In this respect, the Astrographic Limited Edition does a fantastic job of capturing the excitement and promise around space exploration of that era. Everything from its sleek UFO-inspired case shape, to the floating satellite hands — the design in its entirety evokes futuristic moonscapes full of UFO landing pads and space settlements. In many ways, this faithful re-release of an iconic design also speaks to the innocence and hopefulness of a bygone era of space exploration, made all the more bittersweet when you consider how complicated and politicised that domain has become in recent years.

While the Astrographic Limited Edition comes in two colours, my personal preference is for the silver case version: the sunburst dial, like the Earth viewed from space – “that tiny pea, pretty and blue” (Neil Armstrong) – serves as a poetic backdrop for the seconds dot representing Mars, and the hour and minute hands (which to me resemble the solar panels on the international space station). Which isn’t to say that the PVD gold version isn’t amazing. If C-3PO wore a watch, it would totally be the gold Astrographic Limited Edition.

And if all that space nostalgia wasn’t enough to complete the value proposition, there’s also the matter of the swan-neck regulator. Now because I am definitely more watch idiot than savant, I had to google what that meant. Essentially, it’s an engineering choice that tends to appear in higher-end watches, due to the fact that it’s more technically complicated and allows for more finely regulated timekeeping.

At the time of writing, both versions are sold out on the Zodiac website, which isn’t surprising considering that this re-release was pretty spot on.