In astronomy, Saturn’s moon Pandora orbits Saturn.
Pandora is a small inner moon of Saturn discovered in 1980 from photographs taken by the Voyager 1 spacecraft. It is one of the planet’s numerous irregularly shaped satellites and travels near Saturn’s narrow F ring.
The moon acts as an outer shepherd of the F ring, helping shape and confine the ring’s material through gravitational interactions. Prometheus, another small moon, serves as the inner shepherd. Their combined influence makes the F ring one of Saturn’s most dynamically interesting rings.
Pandora should not be confused with the fictional moon in Avatar. The real Pandora is an icy, irregular body only about 80 kilometres across, while the film’s Pandora is a habitable fictional world. The astronomical moon was named after Pandora, the figure from Greek mythology.