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Old January 20th 05, 04:38 PM
Dr John Stockton
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JRS: In article , dated Wed, 19 Jan 2005
15:20:10, seen in news:sci.space.policy, Henry Spencer
posted :

The distance
between Titan and Rhea is never *less* than about twice the distance from
the Earth to the Moon.


Contributory, but non-essential.

I haven't time right now to wade through the
numerical details, but it looks to me like inter-moon tides are going to
be quite insignificant.


Assuming no Saturnian moon is much denser than say 3 (if it was 10 or
more I'd remember) :

At closest to Titan, in Moore units,
Saturn subtends 75100/760000 radians, say 0.1
Rhea subtends 1100/432000, say 0.0025
Hyperion subtends 200/160000, say 0.00125
Iapetus subtends 2000?/1440000, say 0.0015
and the rest are obviously smaller.

Tidal force goes as cube of angular diameter times density; so Rhea's
tide at Titan is of the order of 50 ppm of Saturn's.

At closest to Hyperion, i M u,
Saturn subtends 75100/920000 radians, say 0.08
Titan subtends 3500/160000, say 0.02

So the tidal force of Titan at Hyperion is about 5% of Jupiter's.

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