摘要：The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) will be conducting a nearly all-sky photometric survey overtwo years, with a core mission goal to discover small transiting exoplanets orbiting nearby bright stars. It willobtain 30 minute cadence observations of all objects in the TESS fields of view, along with two-minute cadenceobservations of 200,000–400,000 selected stars. The choice of which stars to observe at the two-minutecadence is driven by the need to detect small transiting planets, which leads to the selection of primarily bright,cool dwarfs. We describe the catalogs assembled and the algorithms used to populate the TESS Input Catalog(TIC), including plans to update the TIC with the incorporation of the Gaia second data release in the nearfuture. We also describe a ranking system for prioritizing stars according to the smallest transiting planetdetectable, and assemble a Candidate Target List (CTL) using that ranking. We discuss additional factors thataffect the ability to photometrically detect and dynamically confirm small planets, and we note additional stellarpopulations of interest that may be added to the final target list. The TIC is available on the STScI MASTserver, and an enhanced CTL is available through the Filtergraph data visualization portal system at the URLhttp://filtergraph.com/tess_ctl.
