Kepler Input Catalog

The Kepler Mission, is specifically designed to survey our region of the Milky Way galaxy to discover hundreds of Earth-size and smaller planets in or near the habitable zone and determine how many of the billions of stars in our galaxy have such planets. The KIC, or Kepler Input Catalog, is the primary source of information about objects observed as part of the ground-based Kepler Spectral Classification Program (SCP) in preparation for the selection of Kepler PI and GO targets. The KIC lists objects down to 21mag, but it is not complete to this limit. Light from only about 1/3 of these objects falls on the Kepler CCD detector. A small number of the KIC objects are calibration objects distributed across the sky. For this reason the full KIC should never be used for Kepler target selection.