URWERK’s UR-100V series continues its evolution with the new “Lightspeed”. Although it is still very much of the same ‘space’ spirit as so many of URWERK’s space-themed watches, this new model takes a different angle, with the appearance of eight astronomical objects from our solar system and the display of the time required for a ray of light to reach them (but relying on our memory that the speed of light is 299,792.458 km/ sec rather than putting it somewhere on the watch.

The new UR-100V LightSpeed’s time display will be familiar to anyone who follows the brand, with satellites moving on an arc of a graduated circle to indicate the hours, and a red pointer also moving along the minutes. When an hour satellite finishes its 60 minutes cycle the next one with the next hour appears in front of the minutes.

The hour satellites are aluminium set on beryllium-bronze Geneva crosses, the carousel is also aluminium, the triple baseplates in ARCAP alloy, and the hours and minutes have Super-LumiNova.

So we have the top half of the dial of the UR-100V “Lightspeed” dominated by the references to eight planets. The “Lightspeed” indicates the time taken by our sun’s light to reach each of these objects – Mercury in 3.2 minutes, Venus in 6 minutes, Earth in 8.3 minutes, Mars in 12.6 minutes, Jupiter in 43.2 minutes, Saturn in 79.3 minutes, Uranus in 159.6 minutes and Neptune in 4.1 hours.

The blue (with fluorescent green in the middle) indicator links to the central time carousel that we’ve mentioned, which rotates once every three hours. This indicator moves from planet to planet in accordance with the distance/ time passed, so you can think of the time taken to each planet in terms of the (time) satellite rotations – for example getting to Neptune takes just over one and one-third rotations. It’s a rather quirky way of thinking about (large) distances and definitely a talking point.

Powering all of this is the automatic UR 12.02 which beats at 28,800 VPH and has a power reserve of 48 hours. It has a black PVD-treated aluminium rotor.

The black carbon case is 43 mm x 51.73 mm with a thickness of 14.55 mm and water resistance of 50m. The case back is DLC-treated Grade 5 titanium and features both sand-blasting and shot-blasting finishing.

Coming on a red textured rubber strap with a black DLC grade 5 titanium folding clasp, the RRP of the new URWERK UR-100V “Lightspeed” is CHF 65,000.

[Photo credit: URWERK]

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