Ratio of the exact virial tidal tensor components 𝒯_zz (solid) and 𝒯_xx (dash) over the approximate ones for various aspect ratios. Unless the radius of the perturbation is similar to the distance between the central core and the center of mass of the perturbation, the approximation is accurate within a factor of 1.3 (for c/r₀ < 0.5). The corrections on the longitudinal and orthogonal axes are identical.