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Grandjean de Fouchy, one of the older representatives of a noteworthy generation of astronomers which arose between 1730 and 1755, was probably ideally placed to describe the evolution of his discipline towards a professional practice and to perceive its role as a symbol of rational scientific thinking during the Enlightenment. In fact, it was Johann III Bernoulli who gave the first analytical record of that community of scientists which he named the “astronomical republic” (1776). Confronting this record with the prosopographical data that we can collect today about the main astronomers of the period 1700 to 1830, the author tries to discern what the 18th century has added to the practical organization of astronomy and how that science, already placed at the heart of natural philosophy, played a leading role in the emergence of modern science from the late 17th century onwards.