Fortis Gives the Already Cool Novonaut N-42 Halo Edition a Fully Lumed Dial

You see those milky white dials on the Novonauts in the picture above? That's all lume. While most lumed dials are just painted with lume, Fortis made the whole dial base from Lumicast X1, a special composite material that incorporates lume within it. That's cool. Some background if the Novonaut is new to you: Fortis supplied chronographs to Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, for three decades, starting with the B-42 Official Cosmonauts that went up to the MIR station in 1994. That partnership ended after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and in 2023 Fortis replaced the B-42 with the Novonaut N-42, a tougher, more modern chronograph. Until now it came with a plain black or blue dial on a bracelet. The three Halo Editions add the luminous panda dial and an upgraded movement, and they’re the best-looking versions of the watch so far.

The case carries over from the regular edition: 42mm wide, 15mm thick, with a lug-to-lug of 51mm. It’s made out of recycled steel, brushed all over, and the head alone weighs 115 grams. This is a big chronograph and it's quite proud of it. I'm pretty sure it would look right at home on my wrist. It is tempting... The bidirectional bezel has a fully lumed 60-minute scale on a polished ceramic insert in black, blue or green. There are sapphire crystals front and back, on the side is a screw-down crown with three gaskets, and you get 200 meters of water resistance.

All three variants have a very similar setup, with a panda setup. The snailed sub-dials, day-date discs, Arabic numerals and inner flange are printed in the accent color, and the blackened hands are filled with Super-LumiNova, including a bullseye tip on the seconds. Fortis says it’s the brightest watch it has ever made. I’d believe it, since there’s simply more luminous surface here than on anything else they make. At 12 o'clock is a 30 minute totalizer, at 6 is the 12 hour one, small seconds at 9 and a day-date window at 3 o'clock, right underneath the Fortis logo.

Inside is the new calibre Werk 17 TR, built with La Joux-Perret on the Valjoux 7750 architecture but with a column wheel. The TR update reinforces the bridges, fixes the balance bridge at two points instead of one, and swaps the index regulator for a free-sprung variable-inertia balance adjusted by screws on the rim. Power reserve goes from 60 to 70 hours, and it beats at 4Hz. The Halo Editions ship on a color-matched hybrid strap in FKM rubber and textile with a steel pin buckle. Since this is a massive and heavy watch, built to be used in extreme conditions, it doesn't depend on a spring bar to hold the straps together. Instead, they use screwed pins. That's cool.

The Fortis Novonaut N-42 Halo Edition is available now in black (F2040021), blue (F2040022) and green (F2040023), priced at €5,950. See more on the Fortis website.