Officine Panerai’s lauded tribute to Tuscan genius Galileo Galilei, the Panerai Jupiterium, will make its much-anticipated appearance in Singapore from December 13, 2013, to February 14, 2014. The exhibition will be unveiled at Officine Panerai’s ION Orchard boutique with an exclusive cocktail for media and VIPs and will be open to the public for the full duration of the exhibition.

This will be the first time that horology lovers in Singapore will be able to admire the Panerai Jupiterium: a highly complex planetarium-clock showing the position of the Sun, the Moon and Jupiter with his four satellites from the viewpoint of an observer on Earth. The Panerai Jupiterium embodies the viewpoint of Galileo himself when he viewed the four satellites of Jupiter for the first time in January 1610, thanks to his invention of the telescope: a fundamental discovery for the history of science, providing empiric proof to the Copernican revolutionary heliocentric theory.

A glass ball representing the Earth is suspended from the top of the glass sphere and it is fixed at the center. The small orbs denoting the Moon, Sun, and Jupiter revolve around the Earth in real time, while the four satellites complete their orbits around Jupiter in 1.8 (Io), 3.6 (Europa), 7.2 (Callisto) and 16.7 days (Ganymede).
The Jupiterium mechanism sits inside a transparent globe that represents the celestial skies. Two semi spheres, signifying the austral and boreal hemispheres, are joined in the middle by a fine band engraved with the 12 signs of the zodiac, symbolising the Equator. The sphere is studded with constellations with the stars picked out in Super-LumiNova® to make them glow in the dark like real stars.

The Panerai Jupiterium has 40-day power reserve and the perpetual calendar at the base tells the day, date, month and year without any need for manual regulation, even in leap years, and will require no calibration until 2100. The whole planetary system is encased in a glass box on a mahogany wooden base, on which rests the clock dial with the typical black Panerai face with long stick hour markers and Arabic numerals at 12 and 6 o’clock, as well as a power reserve indicator.

The opportunity to see the Panerai Jupiterium is extremely rare: it was first presented to the Nobel Museum in Stockholm, Sweden, for the exhibition “Galileo’s Telescope – The instrument that Changed the World” in December 2009. The following September, it was presented at Florence, Italy during the exhibition “Time and Space: A Tribute to Galileo Galilei”. The Panerai Planetarium travelled to Asia for the first time in May 2011 when it was presented as part of the “Time and Space: A Tribute to Galileo Galilei” in Shanghai. Most recently, it was displayed at the “Officine Panerai – Tribute to Galileo: a genius of the Renaissance” exhibition in Tokyo in June this year.

In Singapore, the horological marvel will be displayed at the VIP Room at Officine Panerai’s ION Orchard boutique which is Officine Panerai’s first Asian flagship store and only boutique in the island republic. As the first to feature the groundbreaking new open layout and décor inspired by the history and the DNA of the Florentine watch brand, the ION boutique provides the perfect setting for this advanced technological creation.
The octagonal VIP room, modelled after the interior of a classic yacht, will be covered with a black obscuration coating fabric in a circular shape to allow for the full effect of the alignment of the Super-LumiNova® illuminated planets and constellations.

Visitors to the exhibition can also take in the Science area of the boutique which houses a replica of the telescope used by Galileo for his first celestial observations in 1610, and also the library which displays various publications that embody the brand’s DNA, Italian heritage and its close links to the sea. There is also a watchmaker’s atelier where the brand’s technical depth is showcased.