On the facular contrast near the solar limb

We present an improved measurement of the continuum contrast of solar faculae in wavelength bands centered at 800 and 525 nm. Our findings confirm our earlier result that near the extreme solar limb the contrast decreases with decreasing distance to the limb. Parametrizing the contrast function with ..delta..I/I = 0.2+..cap alpha..(..mu..-0.2) over the range 0.08< or =..mu..< or =0.2, where ..mu.. is the cosine of the heliocentric angle, we obtain the best-fit values of ..cap alpha..: ..cap alpha../sub red/ = 0.25 +- 0.10, ..cap alpha../sub green/ = 0.30 +- 0.10.