The Hamburg/RASS Catalogue of optical identifications. Northern high-galactic latitude ROSAT Bright Source Catalogue X-ray sources

TL;DR

The Hamburg/RASS Catalogue provides optical identifications for high-galactic latitude X-ray sources from the ROSAT Bright Source Catalogue, covering about 10,000 square degrees and identifying the nature of most sources using digitized optical plates.

Contribution

This work presents a comprehensive optical identification catalogue for a large subset of ROSAT X-ray sources using digitized optical survey data, expanding the available data for high-galactic latitude X-ray sources.

Findings

82% of RASS-BSC sources have optical counterparts identified.

Approximately 42% are active galactic nuclei (AGN).

The catalogue aids in selecting complete samples of X-ray emitters.

Abstract

We present the Hamburg/RASS Catalogue (HRC) of optical identifications of X-ray sources at high-galactic latitude. The HRC includes all X-ray sources from the ROSAT Bright Source Catalogue (RASS-BSC) with galactic latitude |b| >= 30 degr and declination delta >= 0 degr. In this part of the sky covering ~10 000 deg^2 the RASS-BSC contains 5341 X-ray sources. For the optical identification we used blue Schmidt prism and direct plates taken for the northern hemisphere Hamburg Quasar Survey (HQS) which are now available in digitized form. The limiting magnitudes are 18.5 and 20, respectively. For 82% of the selected RASS-BSC an identification could be given. For the rest either no counterpart was visible in the error circle or a plausible identification was not possible. With ~42% AGN represent the largest group of X-ray emitters, \~31% have a stellar counterpart, whereas galaxies and cluster of galaxies comprise only ~4% and ~5%, respectively. In ~3% of the RASS-BSC sources no object was visible on our blue direct plates within 40 arcsec around the X-ray source position. The catalogue is used as a source for the selection of (nearly) complete samples of the various classes of X-ray emitters.