In James Cameron’s Avatar, Pandora orbits the giant planet Polyphemus.
Polyphemus is a fictional gas giant in the Alpha Centauri system. Pandora is one of its moons and is the principal setting of Avatar. The enormous planet appears in Pandora’s sky, establishing that the story’s world is a moon rather than a standalone planet.
The name Polyphemus comes from Greek mythology, where Polyphemus is the Cyclops encountered by Odysseus in Homer’s Odyssey. James Cameron’s fictional astronomy reuses that classical name for the gas giant, while Pandora’s name also echoes Greek mythology.
Prometheus is sometimes confused with Polyphemus because it is another mythological name used in science fiction, but it is not Pandora’s parent planet in Avatar. The distinction matters: Pandora is the moon, Polyphemus is the larger body it circles, and both belong to the film’s fictional Alpha Centauri setting.