The solar wind interaction with Venus and Mars: energetic neutral atom and X-ray imaging Original Research Article

At the non-magnetized planets Venus and Mars, the solar wind comes in direct contact with the planetary neutrals. This interaction produces energetic neutral atoms (ENAs) and X-rays. In this paper we review some of the different production mechanisms and present examples of simulated ENA and X-ray images. To extract as much information as possible about the ion and neutral distributions in the observed region one has to further process the images. We discuss different approaches to model the production of ENAs and X-rays, and then how to solve the resulting mathematical inverse problems.