Martin Braun’s complication has been created by the union of two earlier complications in one watch: The World Positioning System from the Heliozentric and the sunrise/sunset indicator of the EOS. Creating this new timepiece was a great design challenge on which Martin Braun worked for two and a half years. The result is a timepiece that is absolutely unique in the watch world. From a distance, the EOS with its crossed hands is easily recognizable, and in combination with the Astraios shows its highly complicated face at first glance.

The mechanism of the EOS is well known but is more interesting in combination with the gear train of the Heliozentric. The configuration of the wheels, precisely calculated revolutions and planetary wheels reflect the unique arrangement of the elliptical orbit of our Earth around the sun while accurately predicting sunrise and sunset day after day. The Earth can be seen through the oval window and is also useful as a month indicator.

It was a tremendous challenge to get all 86 of the essential components into the EOS module. An additional difficulty was finding a way to construct the wheels and a type of bearing that does not take too much force from the movement and offers the wearer the greatest comfort in both use and adjustment. With both issues resolved, the Astraios is easy to use and on the company’s time testing machine the watch’s timing is excellent.

The name Astraios comes from Greek Mythology. Astraios was Eos’s second husband after she transformed her first one into a cicada, and Astraios was also the father of Eos’s children. Boreas, one of their sons is the name of Martin Braun’s award-winning watch that features an Equation Of Time as well as the sunrise/sunset indicator.