Abstract:As the rising plume area at upper part of natural convection horizontal circular cylinder in infinite space does not meet boundary layer hypothesis which leads to differences between various solutions, lateral shearing interferometer (LSI) with large shearing quantity is designed to realize the optical measurement of temperature field. The real time interferometric fringes of natural convection around horizontal circular cylinder with different wall temperatures were obtained using LSI with large shearing quantity. The peak and valley extreme points coordinates of R value component in RGB raw data of color fringe images were employed to identify right and dark fringes and all field series distribution was obtained. And all field temperature inversion in accordance with all field series distribution was completed. Experimental results indicate that the obtained interferometric fringes are similar to the infinitely wide and simple fringes using holographic or Mach Zehnder interferometry as diameter d and shearing quantity s are 15.6mm and 24.2mm respectively. The interferometric fringes resolution is 75.64pix/mm. The inversion of all field temperature distribution using LSI with large shearing quantity can be accurately and quickly completed, the related data of engineering thermal physics analysis can be provided.