He succeeded his father as director of the observatory in 1784; but his plans for its restoration and re-equipment were wrecked in 1793 by the animosity of the National Assembly.

His position having become intolerable, he resigned on 6 September and was thrown into prison in 1794, but released after seven months.

[1] In 1770, he published an account of a voyage to America in 1768, undertaken as the commissary of the French Academy of Sciences with a view to testing Pierre Le Roy’s watches at sea.

[1] In 1783, his father César-François Cassini de Thury had sent a letter to the Royal Society in London, in which he proposed a trigonometric survey connecting the observatories of Paris and Greenwich for the purpose of better determining the latitude and longitude of the latter.

Dominique, comte de Cassini visited England with Pierre Méchain and Adrien-Marie Legendre, and the three met William Herschel at Slough.