An Avatar 2 Superfan Thinks They've Figured Out How Pandora Works

According to Redditor and self-described "space nerd" u/songsofadistantsun, it's estimated that Pandora's day-night cycle is likely around 30 to 35 hours long — with it being not much different than a Terran day. The major difference is that instead of the moon experiencing daytime and nighttime because of Polyphemus' orbital period, it's being affected by how close it is to the massive gas giant and the eclipses that occur as a result.

"For a long time I thought the first movie was unrealistic, because it showed Pandora having a seemingly Earth-like day-night cycle," u/songsofadistantsun explained in a December 17 post. "This despite being that, like any other moon, it would be tidally locked to its (rather massive) parent, and thus have a 'day' in sync with its orbital period. But then I learned that Mimas — the Death Star-looking tenth moon of Saturn — has a 'day' only 23 hours long. Thus I learned that massive planets can make their inner moons orbit fast compared to ours ... and so theorized that Pandora is probably a lot closer to Polyphemus than I originally thought. The background visuals in the first movie are still inconsistent, but the day-night cycle actually makes sense now."

Now, u/songsofadistantsun could have easily just stopped right there and "Avatar" fans would have been more than happy with the analysis. But the Redditor chose to dive even deeper into Pandora's inner workings — including one other astronomical plot hole — and divulge their findings to fans.