  FLASH is the first free electron laser user facility operating in the vacuum
ultraviolet and soft x-ray wavelength range. Many user experiments require
knowledge of the spatial and temporal coherence properties of the radiation. In
this paper we present an analysis of the coherence properties of the radiation
for the fundamental and for the higher odd frequency harmonics. We show that
temporal and spatial coherence reach maximum close to the FEL saturation but
may degrade significantly in the post-saturation regime. We also find that the
pointing stability of short FEL pulses is limited due to the fact that
non-azimuthal FEL eigenmodes are not sufficiently suppressed. We discuss
possible ways for improving the degree of transverse coherence and the pointing
stability.
