We studied desorption of metastable atoms induced by electronic transitions in solid Ne by low energy electron impact. Time-of-flight spectra and the angular distribution of metastable atoms desorbed from the surface of an annealed sample showed increased kinetic energy, higher signal intensity, and a narrower angular distribution compared with those measured using an unannealed sample. These results were explained by considering the sample's surface conditions in the framework of the cavity ejection mechanism. Our results for annealed solid Ne showed that when the sample temperature increased from 5 to 7 K, the width of the angular distribution increased by about 10%. A simple trajectory calculation qualitatively reproduced our experimental results. (C) 2012 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4743890]