Watches and Wonders 2025: Panerai flexes its technical mastery with an astronomical clock

Panerai captivates the audience at its booth with the Jupiterium, a large-scale planetarium clock based on Galileo’s celestial observations. The clock places Earth at the center of a celestial sphere, showing the positions of the Sun, Moon, Jupiter, and its four Medicean moons.

The manual-winding movement operates a perpetual calendar and drives the real-time movement of the celestial bodies. It boasts a power reserve of 40 days, thanks to eight barrels that contain 4m of spring each.

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The Panerai Jupiterium features the planet Jupiter and its four moons

The glass sphere is split into Northern and Southern hemispheres, with a central band representing the Equator. The titanium band is engraved with the 12 zodiac signs. The sphere completes one full rotation every 23 hours, 56 minutes, and four seconds. A small model of Earth floats in the middle of the sphere, with Italy positioned prominently.

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The titanium band dividing the spherical Jupiterium into Northern and Southern hemispheres

The Jupiterium features a rare retrograde function, which mimics the way planets, like Jupiter, appear to move backward in the sky before resuming their forward path. This optical illusion, called retrogradation, happens because Earth overtakes outer planets in its orbit.

To recreate this effect, Panerai developed a patented mechanism using precise gears and counterweights, allowing the Jupiterium to accurately display Jupiter’s motion.

The dial of the Panerai Jupiterium

The sphere is set atop a mahogany base. Below it is the dial with luminescent Arabic numerals at 12 and 6 o’clock, stick hour markers, and Super-LumiNova-coated hands. Key features include an AM/PM indicator, a 40-day power reserve gauge, and a linear perpetual calendar displaying the day, date, month, and year in Italian.

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