Differential gravitational acceleration, multiplied by the affected mass, across a spatially extended body. In the linear approximation the acceleration difference is , where is the tidal tensor. Stellar tidal forces limit the domain of a circumplanetary orbit; sufficiently strong ones can produce tidal disruption.
Tidal force refers to the gravitational effect that one celestial body exerts on another due to the differential gravitational pull exerted on different parts of the object being influenced. This force arises from the fact that the gravitational attraction of a massive body, like the Moon or the Sun, varies with distance.
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