Filtered pinhole imaging is used to characterize spatially the fast ion emission at the target surface irradiated by a CO2laser in a planar geometry. The bulk of the fast ions is found to be fairly well correlated with the lateral transport of hot electrons in the target plane, i.e., a large concentration of rather low‐energy ions near the focal spot with total ion emission over a very large area. Higher‐energy ions show large emission nonuniformities and very small local cone angles somewhat difficult to explain.