ExoPhot: The Photon Absorption Rate as a New Metric for Quantifying the Exoplanetary Photosynthetic Activity Fitness

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Photosynthesis and pigments have already been mentioned. Credit should be given  to:

Berdyugina et al. (2016) Remote sensing of life: polarimetric signatures of photosynthetic pigments as sensitive biomarkers. International Journal of Astrobiology 15:45-56.

Sparks W, Hough J, Kolokolova L (2015) Polarimetry in astrobiology. In Polarimetry of Stars and Planetary Systems (Eds. L. Kolokolova, J. Hough, A-C. Levasseur-Regourd) Cambridge University Press, pp 462-478.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

thank you for your comments. The proposed references have been included in line 55 of the revised manuscript.

Thanks for your contribution.

Best regards,

Pablo

Reviewer 2 Report

This is an important paper, particularly with respect to its discussion of M-dwarf stars.  I only have one comment, which I suspect will be addressed in a later paper the authors allude to.  In our own solar system there is some (controversial) evidence for life in the upper atmosphere of Venus (50 km altitude).  The authors focus on surface conditions, hopefully future analyses would address photosynthesis in atmospheres such as Venus

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

thanks for your positive comments. We will be certainly working in extending or study to different kins of scenarios, including the atmospheric attitude, and real planets scenarios, of course including Venus.

We aded a comment in line 179 to mention our plans to include different atmospheric attitudes in forthcoming works.

Thank you for your support.

Best regards,

Pablo