ASTR 5 Chapter Notes - Chapter 9: Tidal Acceleration, Methane, Orbital Period
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Review questions: explain how the larger jovian moons tend to differ in general from the smaller ones. Small moons are thought to comets or pieces from larger moons captured by the host planets. The larger moons were formed around their host planets the same way planets were formed around the sun, by condensation and accretion process sharing the orbital properties of the original disks of gas and dust. The varying force of attraction between different parts of earth and the moon creates tides on. Because tidal forces stretch earth itself, the process necessarily creates tidal frictions. Synchronous rotation is the rotation of an object that always shows the same face to the object that is orbiting because its rotation period and orbital period are equal. Explain how it can arise and persist as a result of orbital resonances. Tidal heating is a source of internal heating created by tidal friction, happening when a satellite has an elliptical orbit.
