yieldplotlib: A Unified Library For Exoplanet Yield Code Visualizations

NASA’s next flagship observatory, the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO), aims to detect and characterize ~25 habitable zone planets.

The total number of habitable zone planets detected is referred to as the exo-Earth “yield” and accurate yield estimates will be critically important to the mission’s success.

Tools like the Altruistic Yield Optimizer (AYO) and EXOSIMS provide these yield estimates but differ in language, methods, and outputs. yieldplotlib provides a unified library that can visualize the inputs and outputs of these yield codes in a complete, descriptive, and accessible way.
Corey Spohn, Sarah Steiger, Alex R. Howe

Comments: 6 pages, 4 figures, submitted to the Journal of Open Source Software (JOSS)
Subjects: Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM); Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP)
Cite as: arXiv:2512.06149 [astro-ph.IM] (or arXiv:2512.06149v1 [astro-ph.IM] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2512.06149
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Related DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17822644
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Submission history
From: Sarah Steiger
[v1] Fri, 5 Dec 2025 20:58:15 UTC (559 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.06149
Astrobiology,