In certain aspects, the invention features an interferometry system that utilizes coupled cavities (e.g., at least one remote cavity and a main cavity) and an extended light source. The remote cavity and the main cavity can have similar optical properties (e.g., similar numerical apertures (NA's)), allowing them to introduce offsetting, and therefore compensating, non-zero optical path differences (OPD's) between the measurement and reference beams without degrading interference fringe contrast due to source spatial coherence. In other words, for each non-zero OPD in the main cavity there exists a configuration of the remote cavity such that the total OPD between test and reference chief rays, and between test and reference marginal rays is substantially zero.