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.Comment: Submitted to Astrophysical Journal Letter
