Use policyThe full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-pro t purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. The full interaction potential between Ne( 1 S) and Ne ϩ ( 2 P) is determined by least-squares fitting of potential parameters to spectroscopic data, principally from the near-dissociation microwave spectra of the Ne 2 ϩ complex. The potential obtained in this way incorporates the potential curves for all six electronic states correlating with Ne( 1 S)ϩNe ϩ ( 2 P) and the couplings between them. Coupled-channel calculations on the potential take account of breakdown of the Born-Oppenheimer approximation and provide an accurate description of the microwave rovibronic spectrum involving levels within ϳ10 cm Ϫ1 of the first dissociation limit. The Ne 2 ϩ ions are both vibrationally and rotationally hot: the spectrum involves levels up to at least Jϭ25/2 and there is evidence for transitions involving levels near the second dissociation limit. The long-range levels involved have ͗r͘ up to 12 Å, compared with an equilibrium bond length of 1.756 Å for the ground electronic state. The long-range parameters of the interaction can be extracted from the fit and are compared with recent theoretical values.