In the Avatar film universe, Pandora orbits which fictional planet?

In the Avatar film universe, Pandora orbits the fictional gas giant Polyphemus. Pandora is the inhabited moon where James Cameron’s Avatar is primarily set, and the moon’s relationship with Polyphemus is part of the series’ fictional astronomical setting.

Pandora is located in the Alpha Centauri star system, roughly 4.4 light-years from Earth in the story’s future. Although characters and promotional material often call it a planet, the setting’s official worldbuilding identifies it as a moon. Its forests, floating mountains, oceans, and indigenous Na’vi culture form the central environment of the films.

Polyphemus is named after the Cyclops in Greek mythology, a deliberate connection to the franchise’s broader use of mythic and classical names. Pandora’s own name also echoes Greek mythology, but the moon is not the same object as the container or woman in Hesiod’s poem.

The fictional astronomy is separate from the real exoplanet Kepler-22b, which is sometimes mentioned in discussions of science-fiction worlds. Kepler-22b is not Pandora’s parent planet.