Good point, if you are going to be using this pointer inside, or where it can either reflect off of something, or accidentally hit yourself or someone else in the eye, laser protection goggles or glasses are a must for everyone.
If you want to do this, here are some IR laser pointer offerings from Jetlasers.org
808 nm:
https://www.jetlasers.org/pl-e-pro/...nish-silver/49-goggles-no/42-power_levels-35w
980 nm:
https://www.jetlasers.org/pl-e-pro/..._expander-no/49-goggles-no/37-power_levels-2w
1064 nm:
https://www.jetlasers.org/pl-e-pro/...nish-silver/49-goggles-no/36-power_levels-15w
Near-IR (near to the visible spectrum) 780, 808, 980 and 1064 nm all have low atmospheric loss, but that isn't necessarily true through clouds. Here's a graph showing atmospheric transmittance through clear sky:
Click on the image for larger size. The dark lines are areas of higher loss.
I added the red lines to this chart for the more common laser wavelengths (except 1025, that isn't common) which have low loss through clear atmosphere. Loss is very low at 780 and 1064 nm, not too bad at 808 nm which is a wavelength you can find high power laser diodes at fairly inexpensively, although usually relatively high divergence at 808 nm when high power, but that can be solved to reduce the divergence to 1.5 mRad or lower using a relatively long focal length large diameter collimation lens (Long FL to our common laser pointer lenses of 8 mm & shorter focal length). Jetlasers infrared pointers have close to 2 mRad divergence which isn't very good compared to many DPSS visible spectrum laser pointers at 1.5 and lower, but it should work fine for what you want to do.
If you buy a 10X beam expander from them, then the divergence is very good and far tighter than most laser pointers. If using their beam expander at IR you might need a camera to see the beam with to be able to center it properly on the pointer, their design allows so much adjustment it can easily be off to the side too much cutting off half of your beam or more. FYI, cameras with the IR filter removed can pick up 780 and 808 nm fairly well, but not 980 or 1064 nm. The sensitivity of most consumer cameras to 980 & 1064 nm, even with the IR filter removed, is a small percentage compared to 808 nm and shorter into the visible range below 700 nm.
Note: The wavelength of infrared that thermal imaging cameras detect is 3 to 12 μm, and differs significantly from that of night vision, which operates in the visible light and near-infrared ranges (0.4 to 1.0 μm).
