ROSAT Bright Survey

The ROSAT Bright Survey (RBS, table "rosat.dat") aims to completely optically identify the 2072 brightest sources detected in the ROSAT all-sky survey (Cat. <IX/10>) at galactic latitudes |b|>30{deg} (excluding LMC, SMC, Virgo cluster), with countrate above 0.2s^-1^; this program is 99.5% complete, and a sub-sample of 931 sources with countrate above 0.2s^-1^ in the hard spectral band between 0.5 and 2.0keV is 100% identified.

The total survey area comprises 20391{deg}^2^ at a flux limit of 2.4x10^-12^erg/cm^2^/s in the 0.5-2.0keV band. Tables 1 and 3 examine the "RHS" sub-sample of 66 bright point-like ROSAT survey sources with almost hard PSPC spectra (hardness ratio HR1>0.5) which could be nearly completely identified by low-resolution optical spectroscopy with the following breakdown into object classes: 31 Seyfert galaxies (20 Sy1), 22 BL Lac candidates, 5 clusters of galaxies, 1 cataclysmic variable, and 5 bright stars.