For a newly announced partnership with the Starmus Science Festival and in support of its Stephen Hawking Medal for Science Communication award, Omega will present each of this year’s three winners with a special 18k yellow gold Omega Speedmaster watch. The association with a space and science festival like Starmus should make sense to anyone familiar with Omega and the Speedmaster’s history with NASA and its continued involvement in related projects. Let’s now look at the Omega Speedmaster Moonwatch Professional Chronograph Starmus Science Award Gold watch, which is not available for sale, and its purpose for existing.
As divers worked and lived at ever-greater depths, Omega Watches Thanksgiving Sale Replica started work on the famous “Ploprof” (PLOngeur PROFessionel, or “professional aide” in English) Seamaster 600, launched to the public in 1970 after four decades of testing and research. During the R&D procedure, Omega tested the PloProf to 600 meters at the factory, and to 1,000 meters off the shore of Marseilles. Cousteau’s divers also used the watches off the coast of Marseille during a pair of experiments to test the effects on sailors working in depths around 500 meters. For this day, the Omega Seamaster name is synonymous with professional diving. (For our evaluation of this modern Omega Ploprof, click here.) Omega manufactured its first chronograph in 1898, and within a decade, the timepieces were used to quantify time in over 16 sporting competitions. After winning 1st place in six classes at the 1931 Geneva Observatory trials, Omega’s reputation for accuracy led the International Olympic Committee to appoint Omega as the official timekeeper of the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics. This was the very first time in Olympic history which one brand was given the obligation to time all occasions. The brand provided 30 high-precision chronographs capable of measuring 1/10th of a second (an Olympics first), all of which had been certified as chronometers by the Observatory at Neuchâtel in addition to the National Physics Laboratory at the United States. (The timekeepers in the 1928 Olympic Games in Amsterdam used their personal stopwatches.)
Apart from all the gold and the engraved case back, this Omega Speedmaster Moonwatch Professional Chronograph appears to be, in most ways, the classic Moonwatch – the Omega Speedmaster Professional. Here, the 42mm case, as well as the bezel, hands, and applied indices are 18k yellow gold. Essentially, anything that was either steel or white in color has been replaced with gold, including the tachymeter scale and the printed elements of the dial. Fully monochromatic, gold looks as lovely as ever paired with black here on the dial, bezel, and leather strap.
Although Omega doesn’t give a lot of details on these specific limited models, we can assume that the specs are mostly consistent with the standard Moonwatch. Of course, inside is the manually wound Omega 1861 cam-actuated chronograph movement that is more or less the modern version of the movement that famously accompanied the NASA astronauts to the Moon.
As mentioned, the typical seahorse logo-engraved case back is replaced here with a special engraving for the Starmus Festival and the Stephen Hawking Medal for Science Communication. The engraving matches the actual medal that winners will receive in addition to the watch. It depicts the first ever human spacewalk by Russian cosmonaut Alexei Leonov (who was most likely wearing a long-lost Soviet government-issued watch), with the “Red Special” guitar of Queen’s lead guitarist Brian May emerging from beyond the horizon, and the Starmus logo.
Why Brian May’s electric guitar, you may ask? Mr. May also happens to have a doctorate in astrophysics and had a hand in founding the Starmus Festival along with Garik Israelian. That kind of makes him a rockstar in more than one sense of the word. The Starmus Festival has a mission of communicating about and promoting science to the public. The three Stephen Hawking Medal for Science Communication awards will go to three different categories; Science Writing, Films, and Music and Art. Finally, engraved around the edge of the case back are the words “Winner of the Stephen Hawking Medal for Science Communication.”
Omega has stated that only three such Omega Speedmaster Moonwatch Professional Chronograph 18k gold watches will be produced for the Starmus Festival and that this design will not be offered for retail sale, so no pricing information is available. Still a young festival, Starmus IV will be held between June 18 and June 23, 2017, in Trondheim, Norway, and the winners of the medals and the watches will be announced at that time. omegawatches.com