Love numbers of the moon and of the terrestrial planets
โ Scribed by C. Z. Zhang
- Publisher
- Springer Netherlands
- Year
- 1992
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 658 KB
- Volume
- 56
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 1573-0794
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โฆ Synopsis
In the IERS Standards (1989), for the Moon the adopted value of the tide Love number, k2, is equal to 0.0222. In this paper using the latest geodetic parameters of the Moon a group of internal structure models are constructed for this celestial body (see Table ), then the dependence of the Moon's core size on calculated value of k2 is explored. The obtained results indicate that the second degree Love number, k2 = 0.02664, of the lunar model 91-04 is near its observed value (0.027 -+ 0.006). This implies that the Moon may possess an outer core of 660 km radius and of 300 kbar mean rigidity. With the same method the static Love numbers from degree 2 to 30 are computed for the terrestrial planets -Mercury, Venus, and Mars (see Table ), and the influence of some parameters (such as the rigidity) of the outer core on low degree Love numbers is discussed. Finally, the likely range of the second degree Love numbers is determined for the terrestrial planets (see Table ). It seems that if low degree Love numbers of a terrestrial planet can be detected in the future space explorations, there is some possibility to improve the planetary internal structure model. For example, as soon as space techniques yield an observed value of k2 > 0.10 for Mercury, there will be reason to anticipate that a partly melted iron core exists in this planet.
๐ SIMILAR VOLUMES
The secular Love numbers of planets and of the Moon have been computed by use of the recent satellite data. It has been demonstrated that Venus, Mercury, and the Moon are far from the ideal hydrostatic equilibrium; the anguIar velocities (rotation periods) which correspond to the hydrostatic equilib