The orbit of the Solar Orbiter mission carries it and the Polarimetric and Helioseismic Imager (PHI), which is onboard, away from the Sun–Earth line, opening up the first ever possibility of doing stereoscopy of solar photospheric structures. We present a method for a stereoscopic analysis of the height variations in the solar photosphere. This method enables the estimation of relevant quantities, such as the Wilson depression of sunspots and pores. We demonstrate the feasibility of the method using simulated Stokes-\(I\) continuum observations of an MHD simulation of the solar-surface layers. Our method estimates the large-scale variations in the solar surface by shifting and correlating two virtual images, mapped from the same surface feature observed from two different vantage points. The resulting vector is then introduced as an initial height estimate in the least-squares Broyden–Fletcher–Goldfarb–Shanno (BFGS) optimization algorithm to reproduce smaller scale structures. The height estimates from the simulated images reproduce well the overall height variations of the MHD simulation. We studied which viewing angles give the best results and found the optimal separation of the view points to be between \(10^{\circ }\) and \(40^{\circ }\); but neither viewing direction should be inclined by more than \(30^{\circ }\) from the vertical to the solar surface. The method yields reliable results if the data have a signal-to-noise ratio of 50 or higher. The influence of the spatial resolution of the observed images is considered and discussed.

太阳轨道器任务的轨道携带着它和船上的偏振和日震成像仪（PHI），远离日地线，首次开启了对太阳光球结构进行立体观测的可能性。我们提出了一种对太阳光球层高度变化进行立体分析的方法。该方法可以估计相关量，例如太阳黑子和毛孔的威尔逊凹陷。我们使用太阳表面层 MHD 模拟的模拟 Stokes -\(I\)连续谱观测来证明该方法的可行性。我们的方法通过移动和关联两个虚拟图像来估计太阳表面的大规模变化，这两个虚拟图像是从两个不同的有利位置观察到的相同表面特征映射而来的。然后将所得向量作为最小二乘 Broyden-Fletcher-Goldfarb-Shanno (BFGS) 优化算法的初始高度估计引入，以重现较小规模的结构。模拟图像的高度估计很好地再现了 MHD 模拟的整体高度变化。我们研究了哪些视角可以提供最佳效果，并发现最佳的视点间隔在\(10^{\circ }\)和\(40^{\circ }\)之间；但两个观察方向与太阳表面垂直方向的倾斜度均不应超过\(30^{\circ }\) 。如果数据的信噪比为 50 或更高，则该方法会产生可靠的结果。考虑并讨论了观察图像的空间分辨率的影响。