The most important and very expensive part of a magnetic resonance imaging set‐up is the magnet, which is capable of generating a constant and highly homogeneous magnetic field. Here a new MR imaging technique without the magnet is introduced. This technique uses the earth's magnetic field instead of a magnetic field created by a magnet. This new method has not yet reached the stage of medical application, but the first images obtained by MRIE (magnetic resonance imaging in the earth's field) show that the resolution is close to that expected based on sensitivity estimations. © 1990 Academic Press, Inc.