This instrument will not show us the disk of a star. If we look through
it the main impression of the star image is very like what we should
have seen with either aperture singly--a ‘spurious disk’ surrounded by
diffraction rings. But looking attentively we see that this image is
crossed by dark and bright bands which are produced by interference
between the light-waves coming from the two apertures. At the centre
of the image the waves from the two apertures arrive crest on crest
since they have travelled symmetrically along equal paths; accordingly
there is a bright band. A very little to one side the asymmetry causes
the waves to arrive crest on trough, so that they cancel one another;
here there is a dark band. The width of the bands decreases as the
separation of the two apertures increases, and for any given separation
the actual width is easily calculated.
Each point of the star’s disk is giving rise to a diffraction image
with a system of bands of this kind, but so long as the disk is small
compared with the finest detail of the diffraction image there is no
appreciable blurring. If we continually increase the separation of the
two apertures and so make the bands narrower, there comes a time when
the bright bands for one part of the disk are falling on the dark bands
for another part of the disk. The band system then becomes indistinct.
It is a matter of mathematical calculation to determine the resultant
effect of summing the band systems for each point of the disk. It can
be shown that for a certain separation of the apertures the bands will
disappear altogether; and beyond this separation the system should
reappear though not attaining its original sharpness. The complete
disappearance occurs when the diameter of the star-disk is equal to
1⅕ times the width of the bands (from the centre of one bright band to
the next). As already stated, the bandwidth can be calculated from the
known separation of the apertures.
The observation consists in sliding apart the two apertures until the
bands disappear. The diameter of the disk is inferred at once from
their separation when the disappearance occurred. Although we measure
the size of the disk in this way we never _see_ the disk.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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