ROSAT Status Report #167: The First ROSAT High Resolution Imager Source Catalog

[Michael Arida <arida@milkyway.gsfc.nasa.gov>]

Date: Fri, 5 Jun 1998 07:00:00 -0400
Subject: The First ROSAT High Resolution Imager Source Catalog


THE FIRST ROSAT HIGH RESOLUTION IMAGER SOURCE CATALOG 
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The ROSAT Consortium (the Max-Planck-Institut fuer extraterrestrische 
Physik, the Goddard Space Flight Center, the Smithsonian Astrophysical 
Observatory, Leicester University, and the Astrophysikalisches Institut 
Potsdam) announces the public release of "THE FIRST ROSAT SOURCE CATALOG
OF POINTED OBSERVATIONS WITH THE HIGH RESOLUTION IMAGER" (ROSHRICAT).  This 
catalog contains arcsecond positions and count rates of detected sources 
from more than 2,000 public ROSAT HRI observations, including more than 
5700 bright sources (signal-to-noise ratio > 4).  The catalog consists
of all primary source parameters from the automated detection algorithm 
employed by the Standard Analysis Software System (SASS).  In addition
each observation has been quality checked, both by automatic algorithms and
by detailed visual inspection.  The results of this quality checking are 
contained as a set of logical-value flags for each principal source 
parameter.  If a source parameter is suspect, the associated flag is set
to "TRUE"; parameters with no obvious problems maintain the default,
"FALSE", value.  In addition to the catalog, data products for each screened 
observation are also available.  These data products include the
screened source lists, FITS images, and ASCII files containing information about 
obvious real sources not detected by the SASS detection algorithms.
 
Detailed information about the catalog and methods of access to the
catalog and data products can be obtained from the ROSAT Results Archive web
pages in the US, in Germany and in the UK:

http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/rosat/rra/RRA.html
http://hea-www.harvard.edu/rosat/rsdc_www/rra.html
http://wave.xray.mpe.mpg.de/rosat/rra
http://www.aip.de:8080/~rra
http://ledas-www.star.le.ac.uk/rra

Access to the command-line driven BROWSE interface to the ROSHRI catalog
is also available via telnet to either legacy.gsfc.nasa.gov, 
xray.mpe-garching.mpg.de or ledas.star.le.ac.uk - in each case the 
username is xray, then type "browse roshri" (no quotes) at the command
line prompt.

The ROSAT High Resolution Imager Source Catalog will continue to be 
updated as new HRI observations are screened and become public.  New 
versions will be announced via the electronic ROSAT Status reports and
on the RRA web sites at MPE, GSFC, SAO, AIP and Leicester.