{"id":728,"date":"2012-07-03T12:27:00","date_gmt":"2012-07-03T10:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kids.esa.int\/titan_s_tides_point_to_a_hidden_ocean\/"},"modified":"2026-10-08T00:31:37","modified_gmt":"2026-10-07T22:31:37","slug":"titan_s_tides_point_to_a_hidden_ocean","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kids.esa.int\/fr\/titan_s_tides_point_to_a_hidden_ocean\/","title":{"rendered":"Titan abriterait un oc\u00e9an souterrain"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

La plan\u00e8te bleue. La Terre porte ce surnom car c\u2019est la seule plan\u00e8te du Syst\u00e8me solaire \u00e0 \u00eatre recouverte par une telle quantit\u00e9 d\u2019eau. Cependant, un certain nombre de satellites naturels (comme Titan, la lune g\u00e9ante de Saturne) sont susceptibles d\u2019abriter des oc\u00e9ans sous leur surface. Les mar\u00e9es d\u00e9tect\u00e9es sur Titan seraient r\u00e9v\u00e9latrices de la pr\u00e9sence d\u2019un oc\u00e9an souterrain.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Anyone who visits the coast will be familiar with tides – the rise and fall in sea level twice each day. Less obvious are the tides which cause our planet’s crust to rise and fall a few tens of centimetres. These tides are caused by the combined gravitational pull of the Moon and Sun on the Earth. Tides on Titan are created in a similar way. However, this time it is the pull of Saturn which causes the moon to change shape during its 16 day orbit of the planet.<\/p>\n

Titan’s shape-shifting has been detected by carefully tracking the path of the Cassini spacecraft when it flies close to the moon. Differences in the way that Titan tugged on Cassini showed that the moon\u2019s gravitational pull \u2013 and therefore its shape \u2013 had altered very slightly. At its furthest point, when Saturn’s pull is weaker, Titan is almost spherical, like a football. When the satellite is closest to Saturn, it is stretched so that it becomes more like a rugby ball.<\/p>\n

Les mar\u00e9es li\u00e9es \u00e0 ce ph\u00e9nom\u00e8ne provoquent une amplitude de plus de 10 m\u00e8tres sur la surface de Titan. Cependant, cette variation serait bien plus importante si la lune de Saturne \u00e9tait d\u2019une structure interne enti\u00e8rement solide. Nous pouvons en d\u00e9duire qu'on y trouve un oc\u00e9an souterrain qui pourrait descendre jusqu'\u00e0 250 km de profondeur sous une couche de 50 km de glace.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Earth is often known as the blue planet, because it is the only world in our Solar System which is largely covered by water. However, a number of satellites, including […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"esa_banner_image":"https:\/\/www.esa.int\/var\/esa\/storage\/images\/esa_multimedia\/images\/2012\/06\/titan_s_tides_raised_by_saturn2\/17912925-2-eng-GB\/Titan_s_tides_raised_by_Saturn.jpeg","esa_banner_description":"","esa_banner_credit":"NASA\/JPL","esa_banner_licence":"ESA Standard Licence","esa_banner_detail_url":"https:\/\/www.esa.int\/ESA_Multimedia\/Images\/2012\/06\/Titan_s_tides_raised_by_Saturn2","esa_external_url":"","esa_external_new_window":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":true},"categories":[10,11,12],"tags":[],"panel":[],"language":[],"age":[],"duration":[],"resource_type":[],"audience":[],"wf_post_folders":[],"class_list":["post-728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-learn","category-our-universe","category-planets-and-moons"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kids.esa.int\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kids.esa.int\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kids.esa.int\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kids.esa.int\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kids.esa.int\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=728"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kids.esa.int\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/728\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1871,"href":"https:\/\/kids.esa.int\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/728\/revisions\/1871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kids.esa.int\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kids.esa.int\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kids.esa.int\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=728"},{"taxonomy":"panel","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kids.esa.int\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/panel?post=728"},{"taxonomy":"language","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kids.esa.int\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/language?post=728"},{"taxonomy":"age","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kids.esa.int\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/age?post=728"},{"taxonomy":"duration","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kids.esa.int\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/duration?post=728"},{"taxonomy":"resource_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kids.esa.int\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/resource_type?post=728"},{"taxonomy":"audience","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kids.esa.int\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/audience?post=728"},{"taxonomy":"wf_post_folders","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kids.esa.int\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wf_post_folders?post=728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}