page_title: Organa (crater)
section_title: Ammonia
hierarchical_section_title: Organa (crater) / Ammonia
caption_attribution_description: English: This composite image is based on observations from the New Horizons Ralph/LEISA instrument made at 10:25 UT (6:25 a.m. EDT) on July 14, 2015, when New Horizons was 50,000 miles (81,000 kilometers) from Charon. The spatial resolution is 3 miles (5 kilometers) per pixel. The LEISA data were downlinked Oct. 1-4, 2015, and processed into a map of Charon's 2.2 micron ammonia-ice absorption band. Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) panchromatic images used as the background in this composite were taken about 8:33 UT (4:33 a.m. EDT) July 14 at a resolution of 0.6 miles (0.9 kilometers) per pixel and downlinked Oct. 5-6. The ammonia absorption map from LEISA is shown in green on the LORRI image. The region covered by the yellow box is 174 miles across (280 kilometers).
context_page_description: Organa is the informal name given to a crater on Pluto's largest moon, Charon. The crater was discovered by NASA's New Horizons space probe on its flyby of Pluto. The name was chosen as a reference to Leia Organa from the Star Wars media franchise in the theme of naming Charon's craters after science fiction characters. Organa crater is rich in frozen ammonia, which suggests it was created very recently. The location of Organa crater is in the northern Pluto-facing hemisphere of Charon.
context_section_description: Organa crater is the only known crater on Charon that contains abundant ammonia. The ammonia was detected using the New Horizons LEISA instrument, by observing an absorption of infrared light in the 2.22 μm band, which is associated with ammonia.
  The source of the ammonia has not been confirmed, but it is associated with the impact process that created Organa crater, perhaps by removing the overlaying layer of water of ice and regolith. If this is confirmed, the detection could indicate that Charon has experienced cryovolcanic activity, with ammonia as magma. This interpretation is puzzling, since cryovolcanism isn't known to occur on such small bodies. In this scenario, the ammonia may have precipitated from an atmosphere, or soaked the ground from a subsurface source, or diffused out of the existing tholin.
  An alternate explanation suggests the deposit of ammonia was delivered by the impactor that created Organa crater. In either case, it is believed that Organa crater is the result of a recent impact, less than 10 million years ago. The impact that created Organa crater may have been so recent that the ammonia hasn't yet been destroyed by radiation from space.
caption: A composite image showing the ammonia around Organa crater, in green.
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