AAS Journals
Published October 10, 2025 | Version v1
Dataset Open

Data for 'Colors of Life in the Clouds: Biopigments of atmospheric microorganisms as a new signature to detect life on planets like Earth'

Authors/Creators

  • 1. ROR icon Cornell University
  • 2. Carl Sagan Institute

Description

Reflectance spectra of 7 bacterial strains used in the study "Colors of Life in the Clouds: Biopigments of atmospheric microorganisms as a new signature to detect life on planets like Earth".

If you use the data, please cite the accompanying article in addition to the data:

Coelho, L. F., Kaltenegger, L., Philpot, W., Ellington, A. J., Bryan, N., Zinder, S., & Christner, B. C. (2025). Colors of life in the clouds: Biopigments of atmospheric microorganisms as a new signature to detect life on planets like earth. The Astrophysical Journal Letters, 994(1), L2. https://doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/ae129a

Notes

Funding acknowledgement:

LFC is funded by the Heising-Simons Foundation 51 Pegasi b postdoctoral fellowship 2024-5174. LFC, LK, SZ, and WP acknowledge the Carl Sagan Institute at Cornell University. BCC acknowledges funding by NASA’s Exobiology program (80NSSC21K0486) and Interdisciplinary Consortia for Astrobiology Research program (80NSSC23K1477).

Methods (English)

The methods can be found and followed in:

Coelho, L. F., Kaltenegger, L., Philpot, W., Ellington, A. J., Bryan, N., Zinder, S., & Christner, B. C. (2025). Colors of life in the clouds: Biopigments of atmospheric microorganisms as a new signature to detect life on planets like earth. The Astrophysical Journal Letters, 994(1), L2. https://doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/ae129a

An expanded version of the biological information about the strains can be found in this article:

Bryan, N. C., Christner, B. C., Guzik, T. G., Granger, D. J., & Stewart, M. F. (2019). Abundance and survival of microbial aerosols in the troposphere and stratosphere. The ISME Journal, 13(11), 2789–2799. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41396-019-0474-0

Notes (English)

Data nomenclature:

The 7 bacterial strains are organized in letters from A-G.

A - L9-4 Modestobacter sp. (98.7%) 
B - L9-9A-1 Roseomonas sp. (98.0%) 
C - L9-7 Micrococcus sp. (98.3%) 
D - L6-1 Curtobacterium aetherium (100%) 
E - L7-1 Massilia sp. (99.2%) 
F - L7-5 Curtobacterium sp. (98.3%) 
G - L7-7A Noviberspirillum sp. (99.6%)


cal - calibrated. Identifies that the data has been calibrated as described in the methods section of the linked article and results section of Hegde et al. (2015). 

dry - dry measurement. Biota air-dried for 1 week before measurement.

Folders:

Calibrated: "cal" identifies that the data has been calibrated as described in the methods section of the linked article and results section of Hegde et al. (2015). 

Raw: uncalibrated data. Raw measurements. 

Reference: Controls - calibrated control samples same filename format as calibrated data. Specific date in file names.

Trap - Measurement of the light trap. No background. 

TargetReference - Service file for the white reference used. 

White - White reference measurements by date. White reference only. 

Files

Coelhoetal_2025.zip

Files (587.2 kB)

Name Size Download all
md5:9806305a6c7c261051fa3c15166160ba
587.2 kB Preview Download

Additional details

Related works

Is cited by
Journal article: 10.3847/2041-8213/ae129a (DOI)

References

  • Coelho, L. F., Kaltenegger, L., Philpot, W., Ellington, A. J., Bryan, N., Zinder, S., & Christner, B. C. (2025). Colors of life in the clouds: Biopigments of atmospheric microorganisms as a new signature to detect life on planets like earth. The Astrophysical Journal Letters, 994(1), L2. https://doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/ae129a