Atmosphere of Earth and balloons, and too low to permit orbital spacecraft. The mesosphere is mainly accessed by sounding rockets and rocket-powered aircraft. The stratosphere is the second-lowest layer of Earth's atmosphere. It lies above the troposphere and is separated from it by the tropopause. This layer extends from the top of the troposphere at roughly above Earth's surface to the stratopause at an altitude of about . The atmospheric pressure at the top of the stratosphere is roughly 1/1000 the pressure at sea level. It contains the ozone layer, which is the part of Earth's atmosphere that contains relatively high concentrations of
Sodium layer typical thickness of 5 km this corresponds to volume density of roughly 8000 sodium atoms/cm. Atoms of sodium in this layer can become excited due to sunlight, solar wind, or other causes. Once excited, these atoms radiate very efficiently around 589 nm, which is in the yellow portion of the spectrum. These radiation bands are known as the "sodium D lines". The resulting radiation is one of the sources of air glow. Astronomers have found the sodium layer to be useful for creating an artificial laser guide star in the upper atmosphere. The star is used by adaptive optics to