Re: Moon's synchronism (not very long)

[Jim Green <JMGreen@sisna.com>]

At 05:22 PM 3/30/98 -0800, Leigh wrote:
> It seems to me that the lunar ranging people at McDonald Observatory
> might have the measurements on Earthly tidal bulges. 

I have "spoken" with the McDonald people and many others re this, but as
far as
I can tell they are not interested in ocean the tides per se.   They _do_
measure water height, but only to determine the topography of the ocean
floor. 
They probably do have sufficient data for a co-tidal map of sorts, but as far
as I know they have not produced a co-tidal map -- I would dearly like to see
such a thing -- until then we shall have to use the likes of the graphic on my
WWW page.  However, I can I assure you that such a map would NOT show "tidal
bulges"

> .......There are lots
> of hits on Alta Vista. It also appears (from titles in the literature
> of geophysics) that the tidal bulges are also measured with laser
> ranging of Earth-orbiting satellites. 

See above.

>  ......It appears that geophysicists,
> at least, believe in tidal bulges and crustal tides because they can
> measure them. 

Alas, it is true that many of the oceanographers that I have spoken to _do_
accept he idea of tidal bulges -- and with a similar positiveness that
biologists ascribe to evolution. More's the pity.

Now crustal tidal motion I don't know about.  That will be a wholly different
phenomenon .  I think that the crustal motion can be as much as a few feet.  I
don't know if that motion is oscillatory in the same sense as the ocean's
waters.   And I don't know how this motion correlates with the tides.

> See
<http://cddis.gsfc.nasa.gov/slr_brochure/tides.html>http://cddis.gsfc.nasa.g
ov/slr_brochure/tides.html

Thank you for this reference.   I don't think that I have been to a NASA WWW
site,  I _have_ spent hours wandering about the WWW without a lot of
enlightenment. (:-)