On Tue, 18 Jan 2005 05:15:00 +0000, Henry Spencer wrote:

In article , Craig Fink
wrote:
Just wondering how big the tides on Titan might be? Maybe they're huge?

Yes and no. Your intuition is correct that Saturn will raise very large
tidal bulges in Titan. *However*, Titan is tide-locked to Saturn, so
those big bulges don't move around much -- the moon is basically just a
little bit egg-shaped all the time.

Titan's slightly elliptical orbit will cause the bulges to move around a
little, and also to change height slightly as the distance from Saturn
changes. So they aren't *quite* completely fixed, but fairly close to
it.

(This *was* used to put some constraints on the possibility of a global
ocean on Titan: tidal dissipation effects would have circularized
Titan's orbit long ago if it had a shallow global ocean, especially one
obstructed by islands and continents like Earth's. Titan oceans had to
be either fairly deep and essentially land-free, or broken up into
multiple unconnected regional oceans.)


Yes, but it's not always tide-locked. Anytime that there is a significant
impact, one that might cause a large crater, it changes the velocity of
Titan's orbit (changing it's orbital period) and changes Titan's angular
momentum (rotation rate). Now the tidal bulge is going to start moving
very slowly round and round Titan until all the energy is used up and it
becomes tide-locked again. Then the next impact, and the next.

If the tidal bulge is really large, it could be like an "ocean tide" where
the entire ocean goes round and round the moon very slowly. A new form of
erosion, with "tidal rivers".

Still wondering exactly how big Titan's tidal bulge is?

Craig Fink