Statistical method for constraining the capability of the Habitable Worlds Observatory to understand ozone onset time in Earth analogs

The oxygenation of Earth’s atmosphere 2.3 billion years ago, which on exoplanets is expected to be most detectable via the UV ozone feature at ∼0.5 microns, is often regarded as a sign of the emergence of photosynthetic life. On exoplanets, we may similarly expect life to oxygenate the atmosphere, but with a characteristic distribution of emergence times. In this paper, we test our ability to recover various “true” emergence time distributions as a function of (1) stellar age uncertainty and (2) number of Earth analogs in the sample. The absolute uncertainties that we recover, for diverse underlying distributions, are mostly independent of the true underlying distribution parameters and are more dependent on sample size than stellar age uncertainty although both influence the recoveries. For a sample size of 30 Earth analogs and a Habitable Worlds Observatory architecture sensitive to ozone at 1% of the current atmospheric level on Earth, we find that no ozone detections across the entire sample would place a 10σ limit on the mean time of ozone emergence, regardless of stellar age uncertainty.

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Publication Details

Journal
Journal of Astronomical Telescopes Instruments and Systems
Published
2025-08-08
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1117/1.jatis.11.4.042214
Primary Topic
Atmospheric Ozone and Climate
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
0.00

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article

Statistical method for constraining the capability of the Habitable Worlds Observatory to understand ozone onset time in Earth analogs

Tansu Daylan, Romy Rodríguez Martínez, Stephen R. Kane, Sabina Sagynbayeva et al.
Journal of Astronomical Telescopes Instruments and Systems
Atmospheric Ozone and Climate
article

Statistical method for constraining the capability of the Habitable Worlds Observatory to understand ozone onset time in Earth analogs

Tansu Daylan, Romy Rodríguez Martínez, Stephen R. Kane, Sabina Sagynbayeva, Elisabeth Newton, Malena Rice, Courtney D. Dressing, Caleb K. Harada, Sarah Blunt, Jessie L. Christiansen, Eric L. Nielsen
article en

Abstract

The oxygenation of Earth’s atmosphere 2.3 billion years ago, which on exoplanets is expected to be most detectable via the UV ozone feature at ∼0.5 microns, is often regarded as a sign of the emergence of photosynthetic life. On exoplanets, we may similarly expect life to oxygenate the atmosphere, but with a characteristic distribution of emergence times. In this paper, we test our ability to recover various “true” emergence time distributions as a function of (1) stellar age uncertainty and (2) number of Earth analogs in the sample. The absolute uncertainties that we recover, for diverse underlying distributions, are mostly independent of the true underlying distribution parameters and are more dependent on sample size than stellar age uncertainty although both influence the recoveries. For a sample size of 30 Earth analogs and a Habitable Worlds Observatory architecture sensitive to ozone at 1% of the current atmospheric level on Earth, we find that no ozone detections across the entire sample would place a 10σ limit on the mean time of ozone emergence, regardless of stellar age uncertainty.

Journal of Astronomical Telescopes Instruments and SystemsVol. 11(04)
New Mexico State University (US), University of California, Riverside (US), Dartmouth College (US), James S. McDonnell Foundation (US), Planetary Science Institute (US), University of California, Santa Cruz (US), NASA Exoplanet Science Institute (US), Yale University (US), Center for Astrophysics Harvard & Smithsonian (US), Stony Brook University (US), University of California, Berkeley (US)
National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Heising-Simons Foundation
Openalex Percentile: Top 75%
Atmospheric Ozone and Climate
DOISourceOpenAlex
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