Christiaan van der Klaauw will go down in history as having the created the smallest mechanical planetarium in the world, condensed into the miniature arena of a wristwatch – or in fact, a portion of a wristwatch. His opus, the 40mm CVDK Planetarium, depicts the real-time orbits of Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn as they rotate around the Sun. A mechanical miracle that unites horology and astronomy, the CVDK Planetarium – first launched in 1999 – is also a beautiful work of portable art. Just imagine if Copernicus could have got his hands on one of these and prove to his contemporaries that heliocentrism was really the way forward! In addition to the highly accurate representation of planetary motions, the Planetarium has an annual calendar complication.
