These days, for a watch to command attention, it mustn’t only tell the time but also tell a story. This latest watch from Omega has an almost unfair advantage in that department, offering a seemingly unbeatable double-dose of celestial clout. Behold, the Moonwatch – showing off not one, but two kinds of meteorite.

The Speedmaster was not designed with space travel in mind. It was released in the 1950s as a racing chronograph, but later acceptance as a piece of Nasa kit and its use in the Apollo missions, including the 1969 moon landing, propelled it to a whole new stratosphere of watch fame, along with the Moonwatch nickname. The Speedmaster has evolved into countless special editions, many paying direct homage with names like “Dark Side of the Moon”. 

Omega also has quite a bit of history with meteorites. The dressy Constellation range has a whole Meteorite line, with dials made with a slice of iron meteorite. Omega uses fragments from the Muonionalusta meteorite, the oldest known meteorite, which was discovered in Scandinavia in the early 20^th century after hitting Earth around a million years ago. 

Pieces from the Muonionalusta meteorite show the classic cross-hatching known as Widmanstätten patterns. The name comes from an Austrian count, who in the early 19^th century identified the striated patterns caused by the slow cooling over billions of years as the pieces of debris travel across the endless vacuum of space. ‘The beauty of meteorite dials,’ an Omega spokesperson says, ‘is that each one is unique and reveals its own character, thanks to the natural pattern found within the material.’ 

The Speedmaster has also had the meteorite dial treatment before, but this new version cranks things up. The Speedmaster Moonphase Meteorite is presented in two versions. It has an iron meteorite dial that has been coloured with either a black PVD or galvanic grey coating. The new twist is in the moonphase indication at 6 o’clock, which shows two moons crafted from pieces of moon meteorite – rocks found on Earth but identified by their chemical composition as originating on the moon. 

The little dark meteorites have been etched to represent the surface of the moon as seen from both the northern and southern hemispheres. In a nice touch, the stars in the background are positioned to reflect the sky on the night that Apollo 11 landed on the Moon in 1969, as viewed from Bienne, Switzerland, where Omega is based.

The black-dialled version is matched to 18k white gold hands and hour markers, with a black ceramic bezel and a white enamel tachymeter scale. The grey-dialled version comes on a blue PVD-coated base, with a blue ceramic bezel and white enamel tachymeter scale. The 18k white gold hour and minute hands are blue PVD coated, while the subdial hands are white gold. The 3 o’clock subdial has a 60-minute and 12-hour counter, while at 9 o’clock, there is a small seconds subdial, plus a little red anodised aluminium hand showing the date.

This is an updated version of the Speedmaster, and features a slimmer 43mm steel case. It is water-resistant to 50m and comes on a polished and brushed stainless bracelet with a fold-over clasp and Omega’s patented comfort release adjustment system to allow micro adjustments for an exact fit. It is powered by Omega’s Co-Axial Master Chronometer 9914, a brand-new hand-wound movement with a 60-hour power reserve. The movement is chronometer-certified by Switzerland’s Federal Institute of Metrology (Metas) and is also anti-magnetic to 15,000 gauss. So this is a serious timekeeper, but one that also tells a powerful story. 

Omega Speedmaster Moonphase Meteorite, £16,100; omegawatches.com