Pandora, the small moon discovered by Voyager 1, orbits Saturn.
Voyager 1 images revealed Pandora in 1980, and the International Astronomical Union later approved the name drawn from Greek mythology. Pandora is an irregular, heavily cratered moon associated with Saturn’s narrow F ring. Its gravity helps influence the ring’s structure, making it one of the system’s small shepherd satellites.
Pandora is not the same object as the asteroid 55 Pandora, which was discovered in 1858 and travels around the Sun. It is also unrelated to the fictional moon Pandora in the Avatar film universe. Sharing a name across mythology, planetary science, and popular culture creates a frequent source of confusion.
The moon is only about 81 kilometres across on average, so it is far smaller than Saturn’s major satellites such as Titan and Rhea. Its discovery came from spacecraft imaging rather than from a conventional ground-based telescopic survey.