Lunase moon phase watch mechanism | Hacker News Reader

Lunase moon phase watch mechanism

genuineideas.com

70 pointshuhtenberg18 comments

Does the "double bosom" occlusion mechanism have a proper name? I always thought it was a bit daft — excusable on watches perhaps — but on larger clocks where there's plenty of space why not just have a half black sphere that rotates once per lunar month? (Even better would be a small model of the moon with a half black shade rotating around it).

Anyway: I made a (web) clock with that shows the moon position and phase: https://sunclock.net

Great work on that web clock, that's a fantastic UI.

btw here's a simple SVG animation I made while working out the code: http://virtualgeoff/demos/moonphases/

Interesting to show 60 seconds and 24 hour vs 0s. does anyone say 24-hunderd instead of 0 like this would imply?

It's common for 24 hour clocks to use 24 instead of 0. It's also pretty common for people to refer to times after midnight as 24:nn or 25:nn to emphasise it's the same evening. Timetables often do this.

I’ve had the “discussion” about hour-25 vs rolling over to hour-0 before, but in a video timecode sense. Hour-25 does not exist in timecode, so hour-25 is just wrong in that sense. I’ve seen some very strange things that happen when it rolls over in the middle of a video clip.

I expected to see mention of the volvelle - a medieval device made of paper that could approximate the phase of the moon by moving a circular hole around a carefully designed track. There’s a long explanation of it at https://astrolabeproject.com/downloads/volvelle/deconstructi...

while we’re all promoting our moon phase apps, I made one for Apple Watch: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/moon-sign-simplicity-for-watch...

Is this innovative for watch complications? It feels like it. It might be the first innovation for a while.

Consumes a lot of space under the dial, so occludes other complications..

(not a horologist or luxury watch collector)

Mechanical watch:

https://monochrome-watches.com/the-elegant-mixture-of-time-a...

Prague’s astronomical clock does that too:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prague_astronomical_clock#Moon

More about spherical moonphases:

https://www.the1916company.com/blog/variations-on-the-moonph...

A smartwatch complication:

https://www.david-smith.org/blog/2019/09/26/moon-plus-plus/

> Geneva Moon seeks to provide a highly accurate, visually pleasing indication of what the moon looks like right now, right where you are. My goal was to make it so that if you look down at your wrist and then up into the sky the images you see should match.

i meant the mechanism not the idea of moon phase. He uses an interesting variation on an iris shutter to manage the transition of the terminator from C to D

I'd guess that any watch that implements this would be priced in the realm of Rolex or other watches that mere mortals cannot afford. The assembly alone would dictate higher price even if it wasn't blinged out

It’s always nice to find another true lunatic.

I made a series of clocks that only track moon phase.

https://digitalhorology.com

It takes a special kind of mind to tackle an idea so entrenched, rethink the design from first principles, do it well, and come up with something so different from what was there before.

Bravo.

Nice!

Ages ago, a "Moonphase" font which I did was used in the typesetting of _Calendrical Tabulations_, so this sort of thing has always been near to my heart (I also used to use a "Phases of the Moon" application as a desktop background).

> Improbable stars

That was funny! (BTW the middle 'Horned moon drawing' has them too)

Just use a digital screen for that part

Just buy a smartwatch, duh.

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