Pandora, the small satellite discovered in 1980, is a moon of Saturn.
Pandora was discovered in photographs taken by the Voyager 1 spacecraft and is designated Saturn XVII. It is one of Saturn’s many irregularly shaped small moons and acts as an outer shepherd satellite of the planet’s narrow F ring, working with Prometheus on the ring’s structure.
The moon was first observed in Voyager images, and its discovery was announced in 1980. It received the name Pandora from Greek mythology, following a convention in which many Saturnian moons are named after figures from classical literature and myth.
This astronomical Pandora is separate from the asteroid 55 Pandora and from the mythological figure. The shared name can cause confusion in trivia questions, but the moon’s defining association is Saturn’s ring system.