Pandora is the Saturnian moon discovered in 1980 and named after the Greek mythological Pandora.
Voyager 1 images revealed Pandora in 1980, and the moon was later given its official name from Greek mythology. It is an inner satellite of Saturn and acts as one of the shepherd moons associated with Saturn’s narrow F ring. Its gravitational influence helps shape and confine that ring structure together with the nearby moon Prometheus.
Pandora is an irregular, heavily cratered body with a mean radius of roughly 40.7 kilometers. Its name is part of a wider pattern in which Saturn’s moons receive names from mythological figures, especially characters connected with Saturn’s traditional mythological family and stories.
The moon is easy to confuse with Prometheus and Epimetheus, which are also Saturnian satellites and also appear in the Pandora myth. In astronomy, however, Pandora is the moon linked to the F ring’s outer side, while Prometheus is associated with its inner side.