Paper presented at the EGS General Assembly, 21-25, April, 1997, Vienna, Austria
We report on newly obtained results on neon pickup ions from the SOHO/CELIAS/CTOF Instrument - a time-of-flight mass spectrometer which measures the charge composition of ions from solar wind energies up to 35 keV/e. As a result of its large geometrical factor and the continuous observation mode, for the first time singly charged Ne ions originating from the neutral interstellar gas component could be measured as near as one astronomical unit to the sun. These measurements are used in combination with model calculations of the pickup ion distributions to refine our understanding of the properties of the interstellar source of these particles and the processes leading to their ionization and coupling to the solar wind.