Gian Domenico Cassini
(Perinaldo, present-day Italy, 1625-Paris, 1712) Italian-French astronomer.He was a professor of astronomy at the University of Bologna, where he studied and tabulated the positions of the satellites of Jupiter.In 1669 he assumed the direction of the Paris Observatory, at the express request of King Louis XIV, and in 1673 he was granted French citizenship.Continuing the studies begun in Italy, Cassini discovered the satellites of Saturn: Iapetus (1671), Rhea (1672), Tethys (1684) and Dione (1684).In 1675 he detected the dark space that separates the A and B rings of Saturn and that bears his name, the Cassini division.He was the first to consider zodiacal light as a phenomenon of cosmic and not meteorological origin (The elements of astronomy verified, 1693).Cassini rejected Johannes Kepler's theory of elliptical planetary orbits and proposed trajectories through oval curves, the so-called Cassini ovals.
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