Selection, Prioritization, and Characteristics of Kepler Target Stars

TL;DR

The paper details the selection process and characteristics of the approximately 150,000 stars targeted by the Kepler Mission, focusing on optimizing the detection of Earth-like planets.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of the criteria and process used to select Kepler target stars, including the composition of stellar types and ancillary target lists.

Findings

Majority are G-type stars near the Main Sequence

Over 20,000 stars are brighter than 14th magnitude

Includes diverse stellar types like M-dwarfs and giants

Abstract

The Kepler Mission began its 3.5-year photometric monitoring campaign in May 2009 on a select group of approximately 150,000 stars. The stars were chosen from the ~half million in the field of view that are brighter than 16th magnitude. The selection criteria are quantitative metrics designed to optimize the scientific yield of the mission with regards to the detection of Earth-size planets in the habitable zone. This yields more than 90,000 G-type stars on or close to the Main Sequence, >20,000 of which are brighter than 14th magnitude. At the temperature extremes, the sample includes approximately 3,000 M-type dwarfs and a small sample of O and B-type MS stars <200. Small numbers of giants are included in the sample which contains ~5,000 stars with surface gravities log(g) < 3.5. We present a brief summary of the selection process and the stellar populations it yields in terms of surface gravity, effective temperature, and apparent magnitude. In addition to the primary, statistically-derived target set, several ancillary target lists were manually generated to enhance the science of the mission, examples being: known eclipsing binaries, open cluster members, and high proper-motion stars.