Abstract
Experiments have been made with a Wollaston prism of 1-min-of-arc separation for the purpose of observing interference phenomena due to coherence in an extended solar image. By combining the Wollaston prism with a thin quartz plate cut parallel to the axis and by adding Polaroid films on each side, the wellknown interference bands used as basic phenomenon in the birefringent filter have been spectrographically observed. With the Wollaston prism unit placed in front of the spectrograph slit, and in a short distance from this slit, the bands show up with a high visibility. However, if the distance to the slit is increased, the degree of visibility is decreased. An elementary theory is presented which describes the observations in a fairly satisfactory way. It is believed that this method of observation may give useful information sometimes in addition to direct intensity distribution measurements, at least if observations of the sun can be made outside the atmosphere of the earth.
© 1965 Optical Society of America
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