Saturn’s moon Pandora helps confine the planet’s narrow F ring. Pandora acts as an outer shepherd satellite, working with the inner moon Prometheus to influence and maintain the ring’s structure.
Saturn’s rings are made mainly of ice particles, and several small moons interact gravitationally with them. Prometheus and Pandora orbit on opposite sides of the F ring. Their repeated gravitational effects help shape the ring, producing its narrow appearance and complicated features such as kinks and braided strands.
Pandora was discovered in 1980 in photographs taken by the Voyager 1 spacecraft. It is an irregular moon only a few dozen kilometres across, far smaller than Saturn’s major satellites such as Titan and Rhea. The astronomical moon is named after the mythological Pandora, continuing a long convention of assigning mythological names to Saturn’s satellites.