Oblateness -- from Eric Weisstein's World of Physics

The oblateness of an oblate spheroid Eric Weisstein's World of Math is defined by

Let be the angle from pole, the oblateness, and q the so-called oblateness constant, defined by

The centripetal acceleration is

where is the colatitude. Let denote the tangential component of the centripetal acceleration, so

Gravitational Moment, Love Number, Oblateness Constant, Orbital Perturbation

References