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at immersion and at emersion, at latitudes ranging from 46• S to 20• N, and are thus global features of the stratosphere. The profiles of temperature gradients exhibit a clear cutoff at the adiabatic lapse rate, indicating that fluctuations lead to marginal convective instabilities. Although ray crossing can also cause an apparent cutoff of the temperature gradients, we estimate it probably does not play an important role in the observed cutoff, at least for the larger structures under study. The vertical power spectra of fluctuations show a general power law behavior, with an exponent close to −3, between vertical wavelengths of ∼5 and 50 km. The finite stellar diameter and ray crossings can distort the real spectra, and we can only conclude that the original power spectra have slopes between −2 and −3. The horizontal structure of the atmosphere exhibits typical aspect (horizontal-to-vertical) ratios of 15-45, with a tail in the distribution with values as high as 100-200 for some structures. Finally, the horizontal spectrum of fluctuations is a power law with an exponent close to −4 (between horizontal wavelengths of ∼25 and 250 km), if we assume it is separable from the vertical spectrum.

[1] The temporal spread of optical pulse signals due to reflection from multiple onboard reflectors is now a critical problem in satellite laser ranging. The full rate residual profile of single-photon laser ranging can be used to model the response function of geodetic satellites, resolving the uncertainty of far-field diffraction. We constructed the response function model for three types of laser ranging targets already in Earth orbit, the LAGEOS, AJISAI, and ETALON satellites. The center-of-mass correction depends on the ranging system and observation policy at terrestrial stations and varies about 1 cm for LAGEOS and 5 cm for AJISAI and ETALON.

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