Pandora, called Eywa's Child by the Na'vi (Na'vi name: Eywa'eveng), is an Earth-like habitable extrasolar moon from the Alpha Centauri System, the closest star system to humanity’s own Solar System. It is the fifth moon of the gas giant Polyphemus, which orbits Alpha Centauri A. It is located 26,000,000,000,000 miles (4.423 light-years) from Earth. The names of both the moon and its mother planet are coined by humans in reference to figures in Greek mythology.

Despite being almost as large as Earth, Pandora is only a moon of a planet that has thirteen other moons. However, due to the smaller mass, Pandora's gravity is 20% less than Earth's, although its atmosphere is much denser than Earth's due to the presence of heavier gases. Depending on the position of the various moons, Pandora can have two or even three moons in its sky at once, and have solar eclipses on almost a daily basis. Pandora and its sister moons also cast large black shadows on Polyphemus.

Plants and Lifeforms

Due to Pandora's lower gravity, most creatures on Pandora are hexapods (six-legged), although the Na'vi resemble humans and have only four limbs. Creatures roam the air and forest canopy below, similar to Earth's animals, but on a scale several times larger. One of the most domesticated creatures on Pandora is the direhorse, a gray-skinned, hexapodal herbivorous animal with bioluminescent qualities that the Na'vi ride when hunting, similar to the human usage of horses. The Na'vi also ride the mountain banshee to hunt from the air, but the hunter can become prey in the presence of the great leonopteryx. In the canopy below, other deadly yet exotic wild animals roam: vicious packs of viperwolves, thick skinned hammerhead titanotheres and the most fearsome predatory animal of all, the thanator.

Other than the richness of varying colors, the trees resemble those of Earth. They have the familiar trunks, branches and leaves, though due to the difference in gravity, many of the shapes appear strange to humans and the proportions are greater because of the lower gravity. The trees and plant life of Pandora have formed electrochemical connections between their roots and effectively act as neurons, creating a moon-wide "brain" that has achieved sentience, which is known to the Na'vi as Eywa.

Pandora's wildlife also has bioluminescent qualities. Pandora looks like a lush paradise by Earth standards during the day, but at night, virtually all life on the moon exhibits bioluminescent qualities in various shades of blue, purple and green. This possibly explains the Na'vi's blue skin color, which most likely provides them better camouflage at night on Pandora.

Atmosphere

Pandora's atmosphere is a mixture of nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide (>18%), xenon (>5.5%), methane, and hydrogen sulfide (>1%) and is about 20% denser than the atmosphere on Earth primarily due to the high percentage of Xenon; a heavy, colourless, odourless, and generally unreactive noble gas. The high concentration of carbon dioxide in the Pandoran atmosphere makes it extremely poisonous to humans

Day-Night Cycle

Pandora receives significant light from Alpha Centauri B (ACB). As a result, Pandoran nights are never dark during half of the Polyphemian year, but instead are more like Earthly dusk. At the closest point in its orbit, ACB is about 2,300 times as bright as Earth's full moon; at its furthest point, it is still one hundred and seventy times as bright. During the other half of the year when ACB is in the daytime sky, many Pandoran nights are illuminated by both Polyphemus's huge disk and the reflected light from other nearby moons. Truly dark nights are uncommon. Polyphemus occasionally eclipses ACB at night for about one hundred minutes, but the light reflected by the planet still keeps the night from being dark.

Geography

The terrain on Pandora differs somewhat from place to place, as do the Na'vi clans that inhabit them. The humans have settled in the forest region which is home to the Omatikaya clan. There are different ecosystems within each region, and many species such as the mountain banshee are present over a much wider range of biomes than their name would suggest. The Pandoran surface features forests, mountains, volcanoes, plains (savanna), and oceans. A desert also exists in Anurai mythology

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