BellaOnline Forums Education Astronomy Jean-Dominique Cassini

The Cassini Mission to Saturn is one of NASA's best known undertakings. For nearly thirteen years it's sent images and data back from the ringed planet and its moons. But who was the Cassini who gave his name to the spacecraft?

Jean-Dominique Cassini

How's this for cool? A partial solar eclipse on March 29, 2006 is projected onto Cassini's meridian on the floor of San Petronio basilica.

Photo: Linda Hall Library

June 8, 2018. It's the 393rd anniversary of the birth of Jean-Dominique Cassini.

Find out more about the man who was one of the most distinguished individuals of his day - an engineer, mathematician and astronomer. He was also the patriarch of a dynasty of astronomers - three of the descendants of Jean-Dominique Cassini followed him as Director of the Paris Observatory.