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# The Northern ROSAT All-Sky (NORAS) Galaxy Cluster Survey I: X-ray Properties of Clusters Detected as Extended X-ray Sources 1footnote 11footnote 1Results reported here are based on observations made with the Multiple Mirror Telescope, a joint facility of the Smithonian Institution and the University of Arizona

## 1 Introduction

Galaxy clusters are important tracers of the large-scale structure of the matter distribution in the Universe. As the evolution of clusters is closely linked to the overall evolution of the cosmic large-scale structure, important tests of cosmological models can be performed with statistical data on the cluster population. The mass distribution and the spatial clustering of clusters are particularly interesting measures in such studies (e.g. Henry et al. 1992, Bahcall & Cen 1992, Eke et al. 1998, Thomas et al. 1998, Borgani et al. 1999). The construction of well defined cluster catalogues and the compilation of their properties is therefore an important task for observational cosmology.

Galaxy clusters were first detected and are continued to be cataloged from optical observations of galaxy density enhancements in the sky (e.g. Abell 1958, Abell et al. 1989 (ACO), Zwicky et al. 1961 - 68, Shectman 1985, Dalton et al. 1992, Lumbsden 1992, Collins et al. 1995, Couch et al. 1991, Bower et al. 1994, Postman et al. 1996, Olsen et al. 1999, Scodeggio et al. 1999). X-rays have also successfully been used to detect galaxy clusters and to conduct clusters surveys (e.g. Picinotti et al. 1982, Kowalski 1984, Lahav et al. 1989, Gioia et al. 1984, 1990, Edge et al. 1990, Henry et al. 1992, Romer et al. 1994, Pierre et al. 1994, Ebeling et al. 1996, 1998, Castander et al. 1995, Rosati et al. 1995, 1998, Burns et al. 1996 Collins et al. 1997, Burke et al. 1997, Vihklinin et al. 1998, Scharf et al. 1997, Jones et al. 1998, Böhringer et al. 1998, De Grandi et al. 1999, Ledlow et al. 1999, Romer et al. 1999). The use of samples of clusters detected and characterized by their X-ray emission for cosmological studies has two major advantages over samples based on optical observations. First, the optical observations (without very extensive redshift measurements) provide only the projected galaxy distribution and not all galaxy density enhancements in the sky are bound, three-dimensional entities. In fact, in the course of the ESO Nearby Abell Cluster Survey (Katgert et al. 1996, Mazure et al. 1996) it was found that of the order of 10% of the rich clusters from the catalogue of Abell, Corwin, and Olowin (1989) in the nearby redshift range $`z0.1`$ were spurious clusters without obvious clustering peaks in redshift space. For the optical surveys the reliability has improved, however, with the advent of multi-color surveys and machine based matched-filter selection techniques (e.g. Postman et al. 1996, Olsen et al. 1999). Extended X-ray emission from the hot intra-cluster plasma of galaxy clusters is a more clear indication of the presence of a large gravitationally bound mass aggregate since otherwise the hot plasma would have been dispersed immediately. And secondly, the X-ray luminosity is a parameter much more tightly correlated with the mass of clusters than the usual richness parameter measured in the optical (e.g. Reiprich & Böhringer 1999). Thus X-ray emission gives evidence for the presence of galaxy clusters within a certain mass interval. (The correlation of the X-ray luminosity and cluster mass actually shows a dispersion of about a factor of 1.6 if one wishes to determine the mass for a given luminosity - Reiprich & Böhringer, in preparation). The one exception is the case where the X-ray emission is not clearly extended and where the cluster emission could be confused with the emission of an AGN within the cluster or with a possible foreground or background source. This confusion is a problem for a very small fraction of the cluster sources, but in general X-rays are a very useful indicator of a true cluster. In addition projection effects are minimized in X-ray surveys since the X-ray surface brightness is more centrally concentrated than the galaxy distribution.

The ROSAT All-Sky Survey (RASS), the only large scale X-ray survey conducted with an X-ray telescope (Trümper 1993, Voges et al. 1999), provides an ideal data base to detect large numbers of clusters and to compile an all-sky cluster catalogue with homogeneously applied selection criteria. To exploit this unique data base we are conducting an optical follow-up identification program and redshift survey of RASS X-ray clusters in the northern hemisphere, the Northern ROSAT All-Sky (NORAS) Cluster Survey project. A complementary survey, the REFLEX (ROSAT-ESO Flux Limited X-ray) Cluster Survey, is conducted for the southern part of the RASS (Böhringer et al. 1998, Guzzo et al. 1999). The NORAS identification program was started in 1992 in a first step with a list of extended X-ray sources extracted from the general source list of the first RASS processing (RASS I; Voges et al. 1992). Apart from the selection for extent the following extraction criteria were used: northern declination, a minimum distance of 20 degrees to the galactic plane, and a minimum count rate of 0.06 cts s-1 in the ROSAT broad band (0.1 to 2.4 keV). The criterion of X-ray source extent was chosen for the selection of promising cluster candidates, because early tests have shown that such a sample would be highly enriched (by about 70 - 80%) in galaxy clusters. Contrary to the cluster selection scheme used for the REFLEX Survey which is based on the correlation of X-ray sources with galaxy overdensities, the present sample selection is purely based on X-ray information. With this different bias the NORAS Survey has also the potential to find more distant and possibly “opitcally dark” clusters.

The identification of these sources is now complete. In this paper we present a catalogue of the X-ray properties of the 378 cluster sources and 117 non-cluster sources of the primary candidate list. An accompanying paper by Huchra et al. (1999) provides a detailed catalogue of the optical identifications and redshift measurements of this sample, and scientific aspects of this survey are discussed in a paper by Giacconi et al. (1999). While this survey was ongoing some of the brighter sources of this sample as well as some X-ray emitting Abell and Zwicky clusters were spectroscopically observed for the ”BCS program” (Ebeling et al. 1998) by Allen et al. (1992) and Crawford et al. (1995, 1999). The region with the deepest exposure in the northern RASS, the north excliptic pole with exposure times ranging from 2000 to over 40000 sec, is also the subject of a dedicated survey which has identified all X-ray sources (c.f. Henry et al. 1995; Gioia et al. 1995; Bower et al. 1996; and Henry et al. 1997).

Further studies on the X-ray properties of a sample of these extended sources in $`2\mathrm{deg}\times 2\mathrm{deg}`$ sky fields extracted from the RASS revealed, that in the first standard processing of the RASS the count rate and the extent of the cluster sources are severely underestimated (see also Ebeling et al. 1996, DeGrandi et al. 1997). Therefore a detailed reanalysis of the sources in the present sample was necessary.

Here we also report the results of the detailed reanalysis of the sources using a new X-ray source characterization technique. In 1996, a second revised processing of the RASS (RASS II; Voges et al. 1999) with greatly improved attitude quality and with a fully merged photon data base became available. Our reanalysis is based on these new data.

Since the incomplete assessment of the X-ray count rate and extent in RASS I not only leads to an underestimate of the X-ray fluxes for extended sources but also to an incompleteness of the sample extracted from the data base with certain limiting parameters, we have also used the new RASS data base to explore the incompleteness of the present cluster sample in terms of a flux-limited X-ray selected sample of galaxy clusters. In this study we selected a subregion covering the right ascension range from 9h to 14h. In a first step we use the Abell cluster catalogue to study the completeness provided by the RASS I extent criterion. We further study the prospects of finding more clusters with a more comprehensive extent criterion based on the new X-ray source analysis technique. This study also points the way to a more complete selection of galaxy clusters from the RASS X-ray sources. We now apply this algorithm in the ongoing NORAS cluster redshift survey.

Since we will probably not be able tp rapidly complete the identifications of the newly found sources, we decided to publish the first part of the survey for which identifications are now complete and redshifts are nearly (all but 9) complete. The main emphasis here is not to publish a catalog of a complete, flux-limited sample, but to compile a cluster catalogue with reliable identifications based on a wealth of X-ray and optical data which are included in the identification process in a comprehensive way. The present sample contains many newly found objects, some of which are interesting targets for further astrophysical studies.

The paper is organized as follows. In Section 2 we summarize the properties of the primary RASS I source list of extended sources, and in Section 3 we describe the techniques used to reanalyze the X-ray properties of the sample sources. In Section 4 we present the X-ray source catalogue with detailed X-ray properties of the 495 sources. Major X-ray properties of the sources which help in the identification of the objects are discussed in Section 5. The completeness of the sample is addressed in Sections 6 and 7 where we report the results of a rigorous search for X-ray emission from all ACO clusters and search for more extended X-ray sources with an improved analysis algorithm in a test region ranging in right ascensions from 9h to 14h. In Section 8 we compare the present results to the previous ROSAT Bright Cluster Survey by Ebeling et al. (1998). Section 9 provides a summary and conclusions. Throughout the paper we are using a Hubble parameter of $`H_0=50`$ km s-1 Mpc-1 and $`h_{50}=H_0/(50`$ km s-1 Mpc$`{}_{}{}^{1})`$ and further $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0=1`$ for the density parameter and $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_0=0`$ for the cosmological parameter.

## 2 The RASS I list of extended sources

During the ROSAT mission the first All-Sky Survey was conducted with an X-ray telescope (Trümper 1992, 1993). The RASS was performed over a period of six months from August 1990 to January 1991 with two follow-up auxiliary survey missions carried out to fill the gaps in the survey in February and August 1991. The first processing of the survey (RASS I) provided a source list of 49441 sources (Voges et al. 1992, 1996). For this first analysis the survey data received were sorted into one of 90 2-degree wide strips (oriented in the direction of constant ecliptic longitude) while the satellite was still scanning the sky. As a consequence of this, strips are overlapping in regions outside the equator. Photons are exclusively sorted into only one of the overlapping regions. Therefore the exposure time across the strips is quite homogenous, but no advantage can be taken of the high total exposure in the ecliptic pole regions. The survey product resulting from this first processing of the RASS will be referred to as RASS I data base. (The situation is different in RASS II, the second processing, where the $`6.4\mathrm{deg}\times 6.4\mathrm{deg}`$ sky regions contain the full exposure data from the RASS). The RASS was conducted with the X-ray telescope (Aschenbach et al. 1988) and Position Sensitive Proportional Counter (PSPC; Pfeffermann et al. 1986) providing a high sensitivity and a very low internal background. A histogram of the exposure time distribution of the NORAS survey area in RASS I is shown in Fig. 1 (where it is also compared to the exposure distribution in RASS II). For this statistic we use the maximum exposure in any of the strips for those cases where a sky pixel is covered by several survey strips. The mean and median exposure times are 397 and 402 sec, respectively.

The source detection procedure was based on detections using two alternative sliding window techniques plus a subsequent evaluation of the source detection significance and quality based on a maximum likelihood method (Voges et al. 1992, for aspects of the maximum likelihood method see also Cruddace et al. 1991). Only sources with a likelihood of detection larger than $`L=10`$ were accepted into the RASS I source list. (The likelihood value here and throughout the paper is defined as $`L=\mathrm{ln}P`$, where P is the probability for a spurious source detection – or a spurious extent detection in the case of the extent likelihood.) This threshold was chosen such that an estimated fraction of less than 1% spurious sources enter the source catalogue. The detections are based on the source counts in the broad ROSAT PSPC energy band covering the detector channels 11 – 240 which roughly corresponds to an energy range of 0.1 to 2.4 keV. Further qualities of the sources evaluated during the maximum likelihood assessment in three energy bands comprise the source count rate, an estimated source extent in excess of the broadening of the sources due to the telescope-detector point spread function (PSF), and two hardness ratios based on the counts measured in the soft (channel 11 – 40) and hard energy band (channel 52 – 201) or in the hard band 1 (channel 52 – 91) and hard band 2 (channel 92 – 201), respectively. The source extent which is of special importance here was determined within the maximum likelihood analysis by assuming for the source image shape a convolution of two two-dimensional Gaussian functions for the PSF and the source shape (Voges et al. 1999), respectively. The result of this analysis is then a value for the excess extent in terms of a $`\sigma `$-radius of the second Guassian. In this approximation the Gaussian wings are less extended than both the wings of the PSF and the wings of a King-type surface brightness model (e.g. Cavaliere & Fusco-Femiano 1976, Jones & Forman 1984). This is one, probably minor, reason for the effect that some of the X-ray flux in the outer X-ray halos is underestimated in the RASS standard analysis.

First tests of the source quality parameters in RASS I and ready identifications with existing source catalogues showed that many clusters of galaxies featured significantly extended X-ray emission in the RASS. It was known from previous X-ray surveys (e.g. the Einstein Medium Sensitivity Survey, e.g. Gioia et al. 1994, Stocke et al. 1994) that slightly more than about 10% of the X-ray sources at the depth of the RASS should be galaxy clusters emitting in X-rays (see also Böhringer et al. 1991). Therefore it was clear that an X-ray sample highly enriched in galaxy clusters could be obtained by selecting those RASS sources featuring a significant source extent. For example, this is demonstrated by a comparison of the extent properties of the X-ray sources for ACO clusters, stars, and AGN taken from the ROSAT Bright Source catalogue and the correlation with optical catalogues from Voges et al. (1999) shown in Fig. 2 for RASS II data (a comparable figure is also shown in Ebeling et al. 1996 for RASS I results). Even though the present study is concerned with RASS I results we are showing a statistic for RASS II in Fig. 2 because there is no principle difference and there is a larger data base of correlations with catalogued objects available for RASS II. About half of the galaxy clusters occupy an almost exclusive parameter space characterized by an excess source extent larger than 25 arcsec with a reasonably high extent likelihood (with a value of $`L=7`$). Only about 2-3 % of the non-cluster sources are found in this region. Since galaxy clusters account for about $`1015\%`$ of all X-ray sources we can expect a contamination of the order of $`2030\%`$ by non-cluster sources if the sample is selected from the upper right quadrant. This is approximately what is found below. That this small value of 25 arcsec for the excess extent radius threshold shows a significant effect is somewhat surprising, since the mean half power radius of the survey point spread function is 70 arcsec, much larger than this threshold. This can be explained by the fact that in the RASS analysis likelihoods are calculated separately for each photon before they are summed and therefore each photon can be weighted by its own PSF according to the place in the detector where it was registered. In this way photons registered in the central part of the detector with a half power radius of the PSF of 15 - 20 arcsec give a high weight to the maximum likelihood analysis. This makes the RASS source analysis very sensitive to the recognition of small deviations from the expected shape of point sources. In the following analysis we will not make use of the information on the detector positions of individual photons. This is a disadvantage when compared to the standard RASS maximum likelihood analysis, but other advantages more than compensate for this.

A first search for X-ray selected clusters was made with RASS I sources flagged as extended. The selection criteria were as follows: For the extent parameters a minimum threshold of 25 arcsec for the extent radius and a minimum value of 7 for the extent likelihood was chosen, as indicated by the dividing lines in Fig. 2. Further a lower count rate limit of 0.06 cts s-1 in the ROSAT broad band was set and the sky area was restricted to the region $`\delta 0\mathrm{deg}`$ and $`|b_{II}|20\mathrm{deg}`$. The sources at the count rate threshold are thus typically characterized by about 25 source photons. This leads to a source fraction of 76% galaxy clusters among the sources selected. The advantage of this approach is that it yields a low fraction of contaminating sources, provides an effective way to detect galaxy clusters, and involves relatively simple selection criteria. The disadvantage is that the selection by source extent is much more difficult to quantify and to model than for example a purely flux-limited selection technique.

In total 537 sources matching the selection criteria were extracted from the RASS I data base. 40 of these sources have been found to be detections of secondary maxima or fragments of clusters which are already in the list due to a detection at the main maximum. The largest fraction of these fragment sources is located in the very extended, diffuse emission region of the Virgo cluster (Böhringer et al. 1994). The fragment sources were removed from the list after a careful check that they are not associated with another distinct X-ray source in the line-of-sight. We have also excluded from the present catalogue the two detections in the Virgo cluster at the position of M87 and M86, because a useful flux measurement in the Virgo region requires a more detailed approach. Thus we report results for these parts of Virgo separately. In the following we will therefore discuss the analysis and identification of the remaining 495 sources.

Early 1996 a new ROSAT Survey product, RASS II, became available at MPE. This version which is based on a greatly revised attitude solution for the pointing of the satellite during the survey and also uses a much more stringent quality threshold for the times with acceptable attitudes was used to create a new RASS II source list from which the RASS Bright Source Catalogue (RASS BSC) was created (Voges et al. 1999). In this survey product the data are sorted in 1378 sky fields with sufficient overlap ($`0.23`$ degrees) to guarantee an undiscriminating source assessment in the boundary regions. Each field now contains all the photons registered for this part of the sky during the entire survey. The resulting exposure distribution in the NORAS survey area is also shown in Fig. 1. As expected this distribution features a tail of high exposures up to about 40000 s. The reanalysis of the X-ray sources of the present sample makes almost exclusively use of the RASS II data base.

## 3 Reanalysis of the X-ray source properties

To reanalyse the sources we apply a novel technique that is essentially based on measuring background-corrected source counts as a function of a growing circular aperture and checking for saturation to determine the observed source counts. The growth curve of the counts as a function of aperture radius is also used subsequently to analyse further source properties. We therefore term this method the growth curve analysis, GCA. We preferred to apply this method over techniques applied in earlier studies. The Steepness Ratio Technique used in De Grandi et al. (1997) has some similarity to the present analysis, but makes only restricted use of the available photon data in only extracting the source counts in aperture radii of 3 and 5 arcmin. A comparison shows that the uncertainties in the determined count rates are usually higher for that technique than for GCA. Our preference of the GCA method over Voronoi-Tesselation and Percolation (Ebeling et al. 1996, 1998) is due to the fact that the GCA technique is simple to reproduce in models and simulations, the resulting count rates are quoted for a known aperture radius for each source allowing a better assessment of the results in subsequent modeling, and the GCA technique provides a set of very essential diagnostic plots which make the interactive evaluation of the reliability of the GCA results easy and transparent. In addition the VTP technique needs two counteracting steps to correct for the unobserved flux. The first step relies on an extrapolation based on the assumption of spherically symmetric sources and leads to a significant overcorrection which is then compensated in a second step with an a posteriori recalibration based on a comparison with pointed data. The present method achieves a good agreement with pointed data in one relatively minor ab initio correction in a first step as shown below. The presentation of more details and tests of the GCA method is planned for a future publication (Böhringer et al. in preparation), while the essential features of this method are described in the following.

The reanalysis of the X-ray properties was conducted for all 495 X-ray sources in the sample using RASS II data in fields of $`1.5\mathrm{deg}\times 1.5\mathrm{deg}`$ centered on each X-ray source. For 17 nearby clusters featuring a large extent the analysis is performed in larger fields of $`4\mathrm{deg}\times 4\mathrm{deg}`$ or $`8\mathrm{deg}\times 8\mathrm{deg}`$. For 7 sources, where the exposure in RASS II is less than 70 sec, data fields were extracted from RASS I which features a higher exposure for these cases. The reason for the reduced exposure in RASS II is the tight quality constraint which leads to the rejection of some RASS photon data in RASS II as compared to RASS I. The 7 fields of RASS I used here were carefully checked and did not show any peculiarities as e.g. double or otherwise distorted images of bright sources which would indicate a problem with the attitude control during the observation.

The primary data set used for each field consists of a photon event file containing all data of the photons registered in the field area and the corresponding exposure map, providing the exposure time as a function of sky position with a resolution of 45 arcsec pixels. The exposure maps include a broad band correction for vignetting and the effect of the shadowing of the support structure of the PSPC window. (The possible difference between the broad band vignetting correction and the proper correction for the specific source spectrum introduces an error no larger than 2% and no further correction is applied). The photon event files provide information on the sky position and energy channel as well as the time and the detector position for each registered photon. In the following analysis only the first two parameters are used.

The three energy bands defined for our data reduction procedure are identical to those used in the RASS analysis (Voges et al. 1999): broad band, soft band, and hard band. For the source count rate determination and the shape characterization we use exclusively the photon counts in the hard energy band. In this band the soft X-ray background is reduced to about one fourth, while – depending on the value of the interstellar column density – 60 to 100% of the cluster emission is detected. Therefore the analysis in this energy band provides the highest signal-to-noise ratio and the most reliable count rates. Another quite important aspect of the choice of this energy band is that it minimizes the contribution of contaminating sources to the count rate. Since the majority of all sources in the RASS are softer than the cluster X-ray sources, their contribution to the hard band is usually less significant than the contribution to the broad band counts.

### 3.1 Source position and count rate

Prior to the evaluation of the source count rate the source center position and the sky background brightness is determined. The input field centers chosen are the X-ray positions provided by the maximum likelihood technique of RASS II. These positions are not optimal for extended sources and in particular extended sources are sometimes multiply detected in the RASS. Therefore a redetermination of the source position is performed based on a moment method which determines the two-dimensional “center of mass” of the photon distribution within an aperture of 3 arcmin around the input value for the center. This procedure is iterated with the newly found center position until the process converges to a stable center position. The small aperture of 3 arcmin gives a high weight to local maxima. We check all the center positions interactively and correct those cases in which this method has settled on a secondary maximum or where the local maximum is obviously offset from the large scale symmetry of the cluster. Those 5 sources are marked in the catalogue. We have also applied the moment method for the determination of the center position using larger apertures (5 and 7.5 arcmin). In 7 cases we preferred to quote these centers in the catalogue. Also these cases are marked.

The background of the field is then determined from a ring area centered on the source with an inner and outer ring radius of 20 arcmin and 41.3 arcmin, respectively, as shown in Fig. 3. The inner ring size has been chosen such that it is outside the outer radius of the X-ray emission for the majority of the clusters. The outer radius is chosen to make almost full use of the $`1.5\times 1.5`$ degree fields. This large background area ensures that the number of photons used for the determination of the background surface brightness is large and introduces an almost negligible Poissonian error into the source flux determination. There are 17 nearby clusters in the sample which exceed the inner background ring radius in size. For these clusters larger fields have been extracted from RASS II and larger background rings have been used in the analysis.

The ring is subdivided in 12 sectors. The photons in each of the three energy bands in all sectors are counted and the exposure time for each photon position is obtained from the exposure map. The count rate in each sector and the surface brightness are then calculated by averaging in count rate:

$$C=\underset{i}{}\frac{1}{t_i},$$
(1)
where $`C`$ is the count rate, $`t_i`$ is the exposure time at each photon position, and the summation is over all photon events in the sector. The surface brightness is obtained by division with the sector area. An uncertainty for the surface brightness in each sector is calculated from Poisson statistics.

To avoid that discrete sources located in the background ring are included in the background estimate, the median of the sector count rates is determined and sectors featuring a larger than $`2.3\sigma `$ deviation from the median are discarded from the further calculations. Even though sources are only expected to cause large enhancements, we also exclude sectors that have count rates which are too low by more than $`2.3\sigma `$, since some of the positive deviations are due to fluctuations, and to avoid a negative bias in the background the negative fluctuations have to be discarded for reasons of symmetry. The clipping threshold of 2.3 $`\sigma `$ guarantees a successful removal of sources with typical count rates above about 0.04 s-1 which would otherwise introduce a typical error $`1\%`$ in the background determination. The chosen clipping threshold leads in general to the clipping of not more than 1 - 3 sectors which preserves most of the background area for averaging resulting in a small photon statistical error in the background of typically about 5%. This also shows that the variations in the background on that scale are generally small and hardly larger than what is expected from Poisson statistics.

The procedure of the background determination is illustrated in Fig. 3. For the data in Fig. 3a there is no interference of background sources and the background is smooth enough that all sectors were included in the background measurement, while for the data in Fig. 3b one of the sectors had to be discarded due to the presence of a significantly disturbing source. The two figures show the photon distribution of the hard band counts for each source field. The two sources, which have net source counts of 75.2 and 127.9, respectively, will be used in the following to illustrate the further analysis. (These two sources selected as the first sources in the list illustrating the features we like to show: RXCJ0004.9+1142 is the first source in the list with less than 100 photons which features a small but significant extent and RXCJ0020.6+2840 is the first source showing the search for the plateau in the count rate in the presence of steps in the plateau region, see below).

The cumulative source count rate as a function of radius starting from the earlier determined central position is then found by integrating the source counts in concentric rings outwards while subtracting the background contribution. The integration is performed using a ring-width of 0.5 arcmin (a reasonable resolution for the given PSF of the instrument). The source count rate is determined for each ring by weighting each photon with the local exposure time according to eq.(1). The integration is performed for the three selected energy bands. The results are count rate profiles as shown in Figs. 4a and 4b. The uncertainty corridors in these count rate profiles resulting from Poisson photon statistics are indicated as dashed lines in the figures. They also include the Poisson error of the background determination.

In most of these cumulative profiles the count rate levels off to a plateau value which gives the total observed source count rate. The total observed count rate is determined in the automated source characterization program in two alternative ways. In the first approach we determine the radius outside of which the source signal increases less than the $`1\sigma `$ uncertainty in the count rate. This radius, which we call the outer radius of significant X-ray emission, $`R_x`$, is indicated by the vertical dashed line in Figs. 4a and 4b. The count rate with its statistical uncertainty at this radius provides the value of the significantly detected count rate of the source. The radius $`R_x`$ is shown for the two sources as the inner circle in Figs. 3a and 3b .

Alternatively the total source count rate is measured by getting an estimate of the plateau level. In the simplest case it is the average of the flat plateau outside $`R_x`$. In practice we determine the mean value of the plateau as well as the slope by means of a linear regression method for the profile part outside $`R_x`$. If the slope of the plateau is less than $`0.8`$% of the total count rate per arcmin radius, the plateau value is accepted. If the plateau is decreasing the count rate is determined from the mean of three bins around $`R_x`$. If the plateau is increasing, another effort is made to find the best flat part of the plateau by iteratively excluding the outermost and in a second step also some of the innermost bins. This procedure helps in excluding an outer rise of the count rate profile due to a neighboring source or by skipping a few bins if the count rate curve has not completely saturated to a plateau at $`R_x`$. Both effects can be seen in Fig. 4b, where the outer radius of the considered plateau region before a secondary rise of the profile is indicated. The source analysis is checked in each case on the basis of diagnostic plots as those shown in Figs. 3 - 6. About 35% of the plateaus can be characterized by the first step and about 83% by the further iterative trials. There is a residual fraction of about 17% of the sources for which no satisfactory plateau can be established automatically often as a result of contaminating nearby sources. These cases are analysed individually. For all sources we determine the radius, $`R_{out}`$, out to which the plateau count rate was measured by simply following the profile until the plateau value is reached.

For the count rates and their uncertainties quoted in the present catalogue we have adopted the following approach. For the count rates we take the results from the fitted plateau values, which are in general higher by a few percent than the count rates determined at $`R_x`$. This is mainly due to an insignificant further rise of the cumulative count rate profile beyond $`R_x`$. This rise is in most cases much smaller than the statistical error in the count rate. The error in the count rate is then calculated from the root mean square of the shot noise error and the deviation of the plateau value from the value at $`R_x`$. Taking the root mean square would be justified for errors which are statistically independent and Gaussian distributed. Since the second error is a systematic deviation, this does not apply in this case. Nevertheless this is for the present case a practical approach which integrates the two errors by putting a larger weight on the larger one of the two uncertainties. The correction of the measured count rate of the source to a total count rate is discussed below.

### 3.2 Spectral hardness ratio and source extent

For the determination of the spectral hardness ratio the count rate in the soft band is also determined for the same radius as for the hard band value of $`R_x`$. The hardness ratio, HR, used here as well as in the RASS data base is defined as

$$HR=\frac{HS}{H+S},$$
(2)
where $`H`$ is the hard band and $`S`$ the soft band source count rate. The expected values for the hardness ratio for cluster sources is roughly in the range $`01`$ as shown in Fig. 8.

The source extent is addressed in two ways: quantifying the source size and testing the probability that the extent is real, respectively. In the first analysis a King profile with the surface brightness distribution,

$$S_x(R)=S_0\left(1+\frac{R^2}{r_c^2}\right)^{1.5\beta +0.5},$$
(3)
(where $`R`$ is the projected radial distance from the soure center and $`r_c`$ is the core radius of the X-ray surface brightness distribution) convolved with the averaged survey PSF (as calculated by G. Hasinger from the ROSAT XRT/PSPC PSF averaged over the detector area with a correction for the vignetting effect) and azimuthally integrated is fitted to the differential count rate profile. For the profile parameters a fixed value $`\beta =2/3`$ is taken according to the most typical value found in X-ray cluster observations (e.g. Jones & Forman 1984). In the $`\chi ^2`$ fit the core radius is varied in steps of 0.5 arcmin, and the normalization is a free fitting parameter. Due to the very low count statistics we have thus limited the fitting parameters per step to one, the normalization, by choosing the most common value for $`\beta `$. The results for the two example sources are shown in Figs. 5a and 5b, and the best fitting profiles are indicated by dotted lines in Figs. 4a and 4b. Note that, while the figures show fits to the cumulative profiles for a better diagnosis of the results, the actual calculations are conducted for the differential profiles to assure statistical independence of the count rates in rings as required by the $`\chi ^2`$ fitting method. Together with the best fitting value we also keep the minimum radius which is still consistent within the $`2\sigma `$ uncertainty limit. Comparing the $`\chi ^2`$ values to the 1, 2, and 3$`\sigma `$ limits shown in Fig. 5 we find that for the two examples the first source is only marginally extended ($`2\sigma `$ result), while the second source features a clear and large extent.

The second, more sensitive method is used as a test for the probability that the source has an extent at all. For this we use a Kolmogorov-Smirnov test comparing the expected cumulative count rate profile of a point source including background with the given instrument PSF with the radially sorted, cumulative, and unbinned photon counts out to a radius of 6 arcmin. This radius is larger than the 90% power radius of the survey PSF and thus provides enough leverage to display the deviations of extended sources, but is small enough to minimize the influence of possible background errors. This test does not depend on the assumption that the uncertainties are Gaussian distributed. Since the pure photon counts also contain the background counts the previously determined background surface brightness has also to be added to the expected point source profile. Examples of the expected point source profile and measured curves are shown in Figs. 6a and 6b. The background contribution to the expected profile is also indicated and we can see that it is generally a minor contribution at these small source radii. Tests with known point sources have shown that the misclassification of point sources as extended sources is generally less than about 5% if we take an upper limit for the KS probability of 0.01 to classify a source as extended (see Böhringer 1999, in preparation). For the two examples we find probability values of $`0.005`$ and $`1.3\times 10^{14}`$, respectively, and therefore both sources will be classified as extended in the catalogue. In the following we will use these results in the form of the extent parameter defined as $`P_{ext}=\mathrm{log}_{10}`$(KS probability).

### 3.3 Deblending and analysis of very extended sources

The visual inspection of the diagnostic plots of the GCA results for all the sources showed that in 19 cases the source analysis suffered from the blending of the cluster source with another nearby source probably not associated with the intracluster X-ray emission. These sources were scheduled for another analysis including a deblending technique. The correction by deblending was performed for all the sources where the contamination was clearly recognized as due to point sources. Tests show that a single contaminating source is usually easily recognized if its contribution to the total hard band count rate is larger than 5 - 10% and if the source is outside the central 3 arcmin radius. The deblending is not applied to irregular clusters or clusters with substructure where the non-symmetric emission region is most probably part of the diffuse intracluster X-ray emission (and not likely to be due to a point source). In this second analysis the source region is divided in two sets of twelve sectors for the radial region 3 to 8 and 8 to 15 arcmin. The variation of the surface brightness in the different ring sectors is analyzed in a similar way as done for the background ring sectors. Contaminating sources are best flagged by selecting those sectors with a more than $`3.5\sigma `$ deviation from the median. For weaker sources this detection threshold corresponds roughly to sources with fluxes larger than $`3\times 10^{13}`$ erg s-1 cm-2 and in general guarantees the deblending of sources with contributions larger than 10%. The clipping technique is illustrated in Figs. 7a and 7b. In the further analysis the marked sectors are interpolated, that is, they are assigned a value for the surface brightness equal to the mean of the remaining sectors. The automated clipping works well for most sources but in about 30% of the cases the clipping either did not remove the contaminating source completely or removed in addition other parts of the cluster. For these cases we preferred to determine the count rate of the contaminating source directly (with the analysis centered directly on the contaminating source) with the same deblending algorithm and subtracted it from the blended source count rate. The 19 sources that required a deblending are marked in the catalogue.

Since the outer radius of the region in which the source profiles are analyzed is fixed in the automated source analysis routine, and since the cut out regions per source are restricted to a size of $`1.5\mathrm{deg}\times 1.5\mathrm{deg}`$ , some nearby clusters are too extended to be covered completely by the analysis. For these clusters, 17 in total, larger files of photon data from RASS II were requested with fields covering $`4\mathrm{deg}\times 4\mathrm{deg}`$ or even $`8\mathrm{deg}\times 8\mathrm{deg}`$ around the source. To these data the same source analysis was applied as described above with an extended radial range. The clusters that required a reanalysis in a larger sky field are also marked in the catalogue and can also be recognized by their large values of $`R_x`$ and $`R_{out}`$.

### 3.4 Flux and luminosity determination

To determine the flux and the luminosity of a source we first obtain the value of the interstellar hydrogen column density as measured at 21cm (Dickey & Lockman 1990, Stark et al. 1992) for the direction of the source by means of the EXSAS software package routine (Zimmermann et al. 1994). The flux is then determined in a first step by calculating the conversion factor from count rate to flux for a source with a thermal spectrum and a temperature of 5 keV (based on a modern version of the radiation code by Raymond & Smith 1977), a metal abundance of 0.3 of the solar value (Anders & Grevesse 1989), a redshift of zero, and an interstellar absorption according to the measured 21 cm value (Dickey & Lockman 1990) and the absorption tables of Morrison & McCammon (1983). We calculate the flux in the nominal ROSAT energy band: 0.1 - 2.4 keV. All fluxes and luminosities quoted in this paper and in the catalogue refer to this energy band. Fig. 8a shows the conversion factors as a function of absorbing column density for the three plasma temperatures 2.5, 5 and 8 keV. We note that the main dependence is on the column density. The variation with temperature makes a difference of less than $`7\%`$ in the temperature range (2 - 10 keV). Only for temperatures below 1.5 keV larger corrections occur, which applies for the smallest groups of galaxies in the sample. The dependence on the metal abundances is even less, about 1%. Prior to any further knowledge about the redshift and the nature of the cluster source the estimated flux value represents a good first approximation. Note, however, that for non-cluster sources a different spectral shape and thus a different conversion factor is expected.

Once the redshift of the cluster source is known we can determine its luminosity. The luminosity is also calculated for the ROSAT energy band. The calculation is performed iteratively. In a first step we calculate a trial luminosity from the estimated flux value and the redshift and use its value to estimate a cluster plasma temperature using the X-ray luminosity-temperature relation of Markevitch (1998)

$$T_x=2.34L_{44}^{1/2}\times h_{50},$$
(4)
where $`T_x`$ is in keV, $`L_{44}`$ is the X-ray luminosity in units of $`10^{44}`$ erg s-1 (in the 0.1 - 2.4 keV band). We make use of the relation which was derived by Markevitch without any correction for cooling flows in $`L_{44}`$ and $`T_x`$. This applies to our case since we are only dealing with integral count rates and average spectral properties. (Note that we have approximated the exponent of 1/2.02 found by Markevitch by 1/2). The temperature estimate allows the calculation of a new count rate-flux conversion factor for which we now also take the redshift of the source spectrum into account and calculate the source rest frame value for the X-ray luminosity (which involves the equivalent to the cosmic “K-correction”). The K-correction term for example increases up to about 6% out to a redshift of $`z=0.3`$ for clusters with a temperature of about 2 keV and up to about 15% for clusters with 10 keV. The iteration is repeated twice but found to actually converge to the final solution in the first step. The final rest frame X-ray luminosity is the value quoted in the catalogue.

We have compared our results for the count rate to flux conversion based on EXSAS software and special programs using a similar data base and radiation code as EXSAS with results obtained from XSPEC, the online PIMMS software, and the conversion factors used in Ebeling et al. (1998). The differences are always less than $`3\%`$. Thus the use of different flux evaluation software does not constitute a significant source of potential differences between different RASS cluster surveys.

### 3.5 Estimates of the total flux

The X-ray fluxes determined from the observations may still be biased low compared to the total flux coming from the cluster, since part of the flux in the faint outer regions is lost in the background. We can use the fact that we obtained the flux within a well defined angular aperture to make an estimate of the flux that may lie outside this aperture. Note that we use this approach here as a tentative estimate of the flux lost and we will therefore make no further effort in this paper to use the results for a correction, since the underlying assumption that all clusters have the same self-similar shape is not realized precisely enough to make a case by case correction useful without further tests and justifications. The aperture radius that corresponds to the generally used plateau value of the count rate is $`R_{out}`$.

To obtain a rough estimate of the flux possibly missed outside the aperture we adopt the following generic cluster model characterized by a $`\beta `$-model surface brightness distribution as given in eq.(3) with $`\beta =2/3`$ to extrapolate the surface brightness profile outside $`R_{out}`$. For the core radius we are not using the results of the $`\chi ^2`$ fit, since they have too large uncertainties. We rather prefer to make a rough estimate of the cluster size from its X-ray luminosity. From the studies by Reiprich & Böhringer (1999) we find that the cluster mass is well correlated with the X-ray luminosity according to the relation

$$L_xM_{grav}^{1.2}.$$
(5)
We further assume that the self-similar relation of the core radius and mass of the form $`r_cM_{grav}^{1/3}L_x^{1/3.6}`$ holds (see e.g. Kaiser 1986). Taking a Coma-type cluster with $`L_x7\times 10^{44}`$ erg s-1 (0.1 - 2.4 keV) and a core radius of 300 kpc to normalize the relation we find

$$r_c=0.3\mathrm{Mpc}\left(\frac{L_x}{7\times 10^{44}\mathrm{ergs}^1}\right)^{1/3.6}.$$
(6)
Rather than integrating the X-ray flux of the $`\beta `$-model to infinite radius, we stop the integration at 12 core radii which is about as large as the virial radius of a Coma-type model cluster. The difference between an integration to infinity (as for example performed in Ebeling et al. 1998 and De Grandi et al. 1999) to the cut-off radius at 12 $`r_c`$ is about 8%. This overestimate of the flux for integration to infinity is in general smaller than the individual uncertainties but not negligible if one is concerned with the global bias of the sample.

Applying this model to our cluster sample we can calculate the fraction of the X-ray flux missed for each of the sample sources. Fig. 9 shows these missing fractions as a function of the source luminosity and of the detected number of source photons. The mean missing flux is about 8.3%. (The most discrepant point with a missing flux of about 50% and $`L_x10^{44}`$ erg s-1 in Fig. 9a is for example a distant cluster observed at low flux ($`0.510^{12}`$ erg s-1 cm-2) at low exposure which would be excluded in a proper flux limited sample).

The missing flux fraction, $`fr`$, features only a very weak dependence on X-ray luminosity. The linear regression fit to the function $`fr=f(\mathrm{log}(L_x)`$ shown in Fig. 9a decreases from 8.3% for $`L_x=10^{43}`$ erg s-1 to 7.9% for $`L_x=10^{45}`$ erg s-1. A more significant dependence is found for the number of source photons, as could be expected since this is the main parameter determining the significance of the source detection and how far out the count rate integration can be performed. Here the linear regression fit of Fig. 9b, $`fr=f(\mathrm{log}(N_{ph})`$ shows a decrease of $`fr`$ from 9.5% for 30 source photons to 6.7% for 500 source photons. Also this dependence is weak.

An exception to the relatively small values for the missing fraction constitute some of the low luminosity sources as displayed in Fig. 9a. These are elliptical galaxies or very small groups dominated by elliptical galaxies, which have much smaller core radii - as indicated by the GCA King-model fits - compared to the values assumed after eq.(6). Thus for these small objects the model assumption seems to break down and the actual values for the missing flux is much smaller than estimated here. The validity of this generic model for the extrapolation of the total flux will be pursued in more detail in a future publication. A comparison with pointed observations performed below gives already an encouraging confirmation of these estimates.

Alternatively we explore a second approach to estimate the missing X-ray flux by fixing the core radius in the $`\beta `$ model to 250 kpc. This approach was used in earlier studies of X-ray cluster samples (e.g. Henry et al. 1992). Figs. 10a and 10b show the results corresponding to the results of Fig. 9. One clearly notes a very steep increase in the missing flux for decreasing X-ray luminosity in Fig. 10a. The dependence on the photon number for which we would expect the strongest dependence is much less pronounced and not essentially different from the results in Fig. 9. One notes, however, that the scatter in Fig. 10b has approximately doubled. The obvious interpretation of these results is that the strong dependence on X-ray luminosity seen in Fig. 10a is artificial and results from an overestimate of the core radius for the less luminous objects. This inappropriate choice of the core radius also increases the scatter in Fig. 10b. Thus we conclude that this approach is clearly inappropriate for our study and the above used scaling of the core radius is a reasonable choice.

### 3.6 Comparison with the results of RASS I

A comparison of the count rates measured in RASS I for the 378 cluster sources listed in Table 1 with the results of the GCA reanalysis is shown in Figs. 11a and 11b. For the comparison the RASS I count rates measured in the broad band have been converted to hard band counts by means of the measured hardness ratio. Sources which feature a significant extent according to our new analysis are marked in the plot. There is a large fraction of sources for which the count rates measured in RASS I or RASS II are underestimated by up to an oder of magnitude, which are essentially the sources marked as extended by the GCA method. The pointlike sources scatter around the line of equal count rate with an increasing scatter with decreasing count rate. The increase of the RASS I to GCA count rate ratio for low count rates seen in Fig. 11b is most probably an artefact produced by the previously set count rate limit in the selection of the RASS I sources for this sample (as indicated in the figure by the dotted line).

The source of disagreement for the extended sources results from the design of the source analysis technique used for the RASS which is tuned to work optimally for point sources. Two effects discriminate against the proper accounting of the count rate of extended sources: i) the Gaussian kernel of the source shape fitting of the maximum likelihood analysis is bound to miss the outer wings of a typical cluster surface brightness distribution and ii) part of the outer X-ray halos of extended clusters may be treated as background by the background spline fitting process as used in the RASS standard analysis. A source analysis technique tuned to process the extended sources properly is therefore required to avoid these problems and to obtain correct X-ray parameters for the objects in our sample. The reanalysis of all the X-ray sources in the sample was therefore a necessary prerequisite for the compilation of an X-ray cluster catalogue to be used for astronomical and cosmological studies.

### 3.7 Comparison to pointed observations

To test the count rate determination of our new analysis technique against a more reliable standard we have analyzed 80 clusters of our sample in pointed observations in which the better photon statistics allows a more detailed and precise analysis. The results for the brighter sources were taken from the compilation of Reiprich & Böhringer (1999) of the ROSAT clusters with the highest flux. 13 of the clusters from this sample were also analyzed in very large RASS survey fields ($`4\mathrm{deg}\times 4\mathrm{deg}`$ or $`8\mathrm{deg}\times 8\mathrm{deg}`$) because of the large cluster sizes. In the analysis by Reiprich & Böhringer (1999) a more refined source analysis was performed (where contaminating sources are excised in a wide region in and around the cluster and a possibly badly measured background is iteratively corrected by parabolic fits to the azimuthally integrated background surface brightness profile outside the cluster). Therefore it is also interesting to keep these objects in the list for comparison. The other data were retrieved from the ROSAT archive. The analysis technique used is similar to the one described above with a main difference that contaminating sources are excised interactively. We are using the count rate at $`R_x`$. The values for $`R_x`$ found in the pointed observations are generally larger than $`R_{out}`$ found in the RASS data as the flux can usually be traced further out into the background in the deeper observations. Fig. 12 shows a comparison of the count rates found in the two data sets. The objects analyzed in large RASS fields are marked with open symbols. The mean deviation of the count rates determined for the pointed data and the present results is 8.6%. Thus we conclude that the missing flux is on average about $`710\%`$ without a significant bias as a function of X-ray flux. This result is in excellent agreement with the estimates for the missing flux in section 3.5. The validity of the GCA approach is thus confirmed in two ways: the missing flux fraction is relatively small compared for example to the measurement errors and the ab initio estimates for the missing fraction are approximately correct.

## 4 The catalogue of RASS I extended sources: clusters and non-cluster sources

In the following we are presenting the catalogue of the sample of 495 RASS I extended X-ray sources identified as galaxy clusters or as non-cluster X-ray sources. We discuss further characteristics of the source properties and the sample in the subsequent sections. We split the catalogue in three parts, the list of 378 sources identified as clusters, the list of 99 non-cluster sources, and a list of 17 X-ray AGN and one star located in clusters or in the line-of-sight of clusters, where the cluster is not the main source of the X-ray emission. The first tables, Table 1 - 4 list the major properties of the sources. Further X-ray parameters for the galaxy clusters are given in Table 5.

The parameters of the table columns of Table 1 are described as follows. Column (1) lists the source name given by the following scheme: we use the prefix RXCJ for the reanalyzed RASS sources that have been identified with a galaxy cluster, where the ”C” stands for cluster. This prefix will be exclusively used for all RASS clusters analyzed by the above GCA technique. In particular this prefix has also been assigned to the RASS clusters identified within the REFLEX Survey (Böhringer et al. 1998, Guzzo et al. 1999). The remaining part of the name refers to the source coordinates for the epoch J2000 in hours (RA) or degrees (DEC), minutes, and fractions of a minute. Since the cluster sources are usually extended by more than one arcmin we use an arcmin precision in converting the cluster coordinates into the remaining part of the source name, thus the total name has 15 digits. Note that the coordinates in the cluster source name can deviate from the official RASS source catalogue coordinates reflecting the difference in the source analysis technique used. Column (2) gives alternative source names for previously catalogued optical counterparts to the X-ray sources, mainly Abell and Zwicky cluster names, names of NGC and UGC galaxies forming the central dominant galaxies of groups, and previously identified RASS or other X-ray sources. The Zwicky cluster names given in the table conform with the convention of the NED data base (note that the coordinate reference in the name refers here to epoch B1950). Columns (3) and (4) give the source position in decimal degrees for the epoch J2000. Column (5) gives the redshift of the cluster. Column (6) lists the measured count rate in units of counts s-1. Columns (7) and (8) give the X-ray flux in units of $`10^{12}`$ erg s-1 cm-2 for the flux estimated for a temperature of 5 keV in the first step and the finally calculated corrected flux, respectively. This correction includes the recalculation of the count rate flux conversion for the best temperature estimate and the redshift of the spectrum, but not the addition of the estimated missing flux. The fractional uncertainty in percent for the count rate, the fluxes and the luminosity are given in Column (9). Column (10) gives the rest frame X-ray luminosity of the clusters in the 0.1 - 2.4 keV energy band. Column (11) lists the value assumed for the absorbing column density in the line-of-sight to the source in units of $`10^{20}`$ cm-2, and column (12) indicates with the sign “?” if the identification as a cluster leaves some residual doubts. In some cases a second flag provides information on the way the source position was determined as explained below. Column (12) also lists the flags for the sources which have been deblended, flag $`B`$, analyzed in extra large fields, flag $`L`$, and sources which may be contaminated, flag $`C`$. The last column, (13), gives the reference number for the redshift as listed in the table caption. The objects marked by “?” or $`C`$ are commented below.

For the position we have used the coordinates determined by the moment method with a 3 arcmin aperture radius. As an exception in the case of 12 cluster sources we have chosen to either redetermine the center position by a moment method with a larger aperture of 5 or 7.5 arcmin or we have determined a center position by hand. In these sources the automatic detection has selected a maximum which is significantly offset from the global center of symmetry of the clusters. These clusters are marked by the flags b, c, o in column (13) for the 5 arcmin and 7.5 arcmin moment method and the determination by eye, respectively.

Table 2 lists the equivalent parameters for the RASS I extended sources identified as non-cluster objects. Here column (2) gives the source type of the identification except for cases with popular object names. A more detailed identification will be given in the second paper by Huchra et al. (1999). Columns (3) to (8) have the same definition as these columns in Table 1. Columns (9) to (14) give the extent parameter $`P_{ext}`$ from the KS test, the best fitting core radius, its minimal value consistent with the $`2\sigma `$ uncertainty limit, the hardness ratio, its error, and the deviation from the expected value of $`HR`$ in units of $`\sigma `$. The hardness ratio does occationally exceed the value of one in the tables, which occurs when the soft photon counts in the source region fall short of the background expectation. Note that for the parameters $`P_{ext}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }HR`$ an upper limit to the numerical value of 30 and 10, respectively, was set, which was also used in plotting the data. Column (15) gives the interstellar HI column density. In the last column (16) objects with no certain optical identification are marked with “?”. The identification strategy for the non-cluster sources is explained in section 5. The last column also contains the flag for the alternative center determination.

Table 3 lists X-ray sources where the X-ray emission is obviously originating from an AGN and in one case from a star, but where a cluster or group of galaxies is also visible on the Palomar Sky Survey images or on the CCD frames taken for this project. In several cases which are commented in Table 4 the redshift information indicates in addition the existence of a cluster and that the AGN is at the same redshift. The meaning of the columns of Table 3 is the same as that for Table 2. Table 4 provides the redshifts of the AGN as far as known and comments on the source identification.

Figure 13 shows the distribution of the sources from Table 1 - 3 in the sky. Since we have not yet imposed a strict flux limit to the survey and also due to the incompleteness of the sample we cannot necessarily expect a homogeneous coverage of the sources in the sky. Near the coordinates $`RA=270\mathrm{deg}`$ and $`DEC=70\mathrm{deg}`$ we note a significant concentration of sources, which is due to the concentration of overlapping survey strips at the north ecliptic pole (NEP). (Note that this is not due to a pile up of exposure time at the NEP, since each survey strip was analysed independently, but due to the fact that the chance for detection of low flux, extended sources is increased in the multiple strips. A homogeneous coverage is achieved here only after imposing a proper flux cut.) There are also several low density regions in the source distribution as for example at the northern tip of the south galactic cap region.

The distribution in X-ray luminosity and redshift of the sources in the cluster sample is shown in Fig. 14. The parabolic curves indicate limiting fluxes of $`10^{12}`$ erg s-1 cm-2 and $`3\times 10^{12}`$ erg s-1 cm-2, respectively. There are 5 clusters with redshifts larger than 0.4 and 18 clusters with redshifts between 0.3 and 0.4. About half (11) of these clusters have luminosities in excess of $`10^{45}`$ erg s-1 and belong to the most X-ray luminous clusters in the Universe.

### 4.1 Comments on individual objects

RXCJ0106.8+0103 has an active galaxy in the cluster noted in the survey by Romer et al. (1994). The RASS image is consistent with a point source and a cluster spectrum. The available ROSAT HRI image has a small but significant extent. If the emission is mainly due to the cluster it would be very compact for the given high luminosity. A CCD exposure shows a nice cluster image and therefore we expect that this object is an X-ray cluster with a severe X-ray contamination by the AGN.

RXCJ0255.8+0918 is a pointlike X-ray source with spectral properties consistent with intracluster medium emission centered on an elliptical galaxy. The galaxy is also classified as Sy2/LINER (Pietsch et al. 1999). They also note that the galaxy is located in a group. Without further information it is difficult to distingish between AGN or hot gas halo emission. The X-ray luminosity of $`L_x=0.7\times 10^{43}`$ erg s-1 could well be that of a small group.

RXCJ0311.5+0714 is not certainly confirmed as an X-ray cluster and the redshift is uncertain since only one galaxy redshift is available.

RXCJ0728.9+2935 is a cluster candidate in a crowded stellar field featuring a pointlike X-ray source. Only one galaxy redshift is available for the X-ray source region.

RXCJ0736+3925 shows extended X-ray emission, mostly due to intracluster medium emission, but obviously also some contribution by a softer central point source.

RXCJ0921.1+4538 coincides with the radio galaxy 3C219. The X-ray source is point like but the hardness ratio is consistent with hot gas emission. 3C219 is located in a galaxy group. Without further information we cannot definitely decide if the X-ray emission comes from the AGN or the group.

RXCJ1009.3+7110 is a case similar to RXCJ0106.8+0103 where a Seyfert 2 galaxy is listed in the Veron catalogue (Veron-Cetti & Veron 1998) and the ROSAT HRI image shows most probably a point source with a very compact halo. Thus this object is also classified as cluster contaminated by an X-ray AGN.

RXCJ1122.2+6712 shows in the available HRI image a small extended halo around the galaxy VII Zw 392. The RASS source is contaminated by a nearby point source. The X-ray halo is with a luminosity of less than $`10^{43}`$ erg s-1 quite faint corresponding to a very small group. It is one of the faintest sources in the sample.

RXCJ1157.3+3336: For this X-ray source two cluster identifications are possible. It is associated with Abell 1423 at a redshift of 0.0761 but there is also the possibility that a cluster is associated with the radio galaxy 7C 1154+3353 located at the center of the X-ray emission. The 7C galaxy is classified as cD galaxy. We adopt the identification of an X-ray cluster associated to the 7C galaxy because of the better positional coincidence. Crawford et al. (1999) note the same identification.

RXCJ1229.7+0759 and RXCJ1243.6+1133 are the X-ray halos of the two Virgo cluster galaxies M49 and M60, respectively. They are included in this catalogue, even though these halos are embedded within the low surface brightness structure of the Virgo cluster emission. But since the two local halos stand out from the low surface brightness emission environment and can be reasonably characterized by the present source characterization technique we have not excluded them from our catalogue as we have excluded M86 and M87.

RXCJ1510.1+3330, RXCJ1556.1+6621, RXCJ1700.7+6412 show a contamination by a point source in the available HRI image by no more than 10 - 15%.

RXCJ1518.7+0613 is contaminated by X-ray emission from an AGN in the cluster, which is also indicated by a softer hardness ratio than expected for a galaxy cluster.

RXCJ1554.2+3237 is not yet definitely confirmed as cluster and the redshift is uncertain since there is only one galaxy redshift.

RXCJ1644.9+0140 and RXCJ1647.4+0441 are cluster candidates in a crowded stellar field where no conclusive redshift has been ontained so far. RXCJ1644.9+014 is possibly a distant cluster.

RXCJ1738.1+6006 is also a cluster candidate in a crowded stellar field with extended X-ray emission at the significance threshold. No redshift has yet been obtained. A Seyfert galaxy is known with a distance of 1 arcmin from the X-ray maximum which is most probably not the X-ray source because the offset would be unusually large.

RXCJ1800.5+6913 has a complex structure and is obviously contaminated by emission from point sources. But these sources contribute less than 20% to the overall emission from the cluster.

RXCJ1832.5+6848 contains a BL Lac in the cluster center, which most probably severely contaminates the cluster X-ray emission.

RXCJ1854.1+6858 is a cluster candidate featuring an extended X-ray source. The redshift is uncertain since only one galaxy redshift is available.

RXCJ2035.7+0046 is an extended low surface brightness source with a detection significance of 3 to 4 $`\sigma `$. It is a cluster candidate in a very crowded stellar field for which no redshift is available yet.

RXCJ2041.7+0721 is a cluster candidate in a crowded stellar field with only one available redshift.

## 5 Discussion of the major source properties

Further properties of the X-ray cluster sources are provided by Table 5. The columns of the table are as follows. Column (1) and (2) repeat the name and rest frame ROSAT band X-ray luminosity of the sources from the previous tables. Columns (3) and (4) give the radius out to which the source count rate has been integrated, $`R_{out}`$, in units of arcmin and Mpc, respectively. Column (5) gives the probability result of the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test for the source to be a point source in terms of the parameter $`P_{ext}`$. For very low probabilities for the consitency with a point source the parameter $`P_{ext}`$ was limited to a value of 30 for the entry in the table. A source is considered very likely to be extended if this parameter has at least a value of 2 (point source excluded with 99% probability). Column (6) and (7) give the best fitting core radius for the King model fit and the minimal core radius still consistent within 2$`\sigma `$ error limits, respectively. Note that the core radii determined here are a only qualitative measure for the source extent, since in general the errors are very large and the fitting grid was coarsely spaced. Therefore we do not recommend to use the results for $`r_c`$ as a measure of the statistics of the cluster shapes at this point. Column (8) and (9) give the spectral hardness ratio defined by eq.(2) and its Poissonian error. Column (10) finally indicates the deviation of the measured hardness ratio from the expectation value calculated for the given $`N_H`$ and for a temperature of 5 keV. This deviation parameter is given in units of the $`1\sigma `$-error of the hardness ratio and the listed and plotted values were limited to a maximum numerical value of 10.

One of the most interesting first questions about these parameters concerns the discrimination power of the spectral and extent parameters in distinguishing between cluster and non-cluster sources. This is analysed in detail for statistical samples of sources with known identifications in the forthcoming paper by Böhringer et al. (in preparation). The present source sample should be highly biased since it was preselected from the RASS I data with the criterion of showing a significant extent in the RASS I analysis. We have to expect for example that the subsample of point sources within the present sample is already enriched in pathological cases including e.g. double and very bright sources. Therefore the present sample is used here only for a qualitative discussion while statistical numbers can only be obtained from the analysis to be published in the following paper.

Fig. 15 displays the distribution of the spectral and spatial extent parameters for the cluster and non-cluster sources for comparison. For the spectral discrimination we plot the difference of the actually observed hardness ratio to the theoretically expected hardness ratio as calculated for a 5 keV cluster as shown in Fig. 8. The difference is thereby quantified in terms of the $`\sigma `$-deviation accounting for the uncertainty of the hardness ratio measurement. To quantify the extent we use the probability result of the KS-test for a point source in terms of the extent parameter $`P_{ext}`$. As we can see most of the clusters occupy the upper part of the figure and cover a wide range of extent values. As expected, non-cluster sources are concentrated in the region of small values of $`P_{ext}`$. Clusters have harder spectra than the average of the other X-ray sources being mostly stars or AGN, and therefore clusters should be separable by the hardness ratio from the softer part of the non-cluster population. On the other hand the extent parameter should help in the discrimination against the non-cluster sources since they are to the vast majority point-like sources at the angular resolution of ROSAT.

This is clearly seen in Figs. 16 and 17 which show a blow-up of Fig. 15 and display the cluster and non-cluster sources separately. Only 12 clusters out-off 378 show a more than $`3\sigma `$ deviation to the X-ray soft side. These are to about one half very bright clusters (including Coma) where the relative deviation is small in absolute sense and could reflect for example an incorrect value for the column density. For some of the sources we suspect some contamination by AGN to the overall emission. One of these cases is for example A1722 for which the HRI observation confirms the contribution of a point source to the extended cluster emission by an amount of about 30 - 40%. Anyway these pathological cases comprise only about 3% of the sample and the hardness ratio provides indeed a very powerful diagnostics for the source identification.

A similarly interesting result is found for the extent parameter, $`P_{ext}`$ for the case of the non-cluster sources shown in Fig. 17. Only 22 out-off 117 sources show an extent if we adopt the extent threshold criterion defined above, that is, a value of $`P_{ext}2`$. Some of these sources are very bright and soft and are far from the expectation for a cluster type spectrum. If we exclude these sources with deviations larger than $`8\sigma `$, there are only 13 sources for which the nature of the extent should be investigated to rule out a cluster nature. For more than half of these sources we find a reason why they are featuring an extent: 2 are nearby galaxies, M82, M106, which show extended X-ray emission, 7 of the sources are double sources where the main, catalogued source is consistent with a point source. Some of the remaining sources are very bright in the RASS (more than 500 photons) and, therefore, the relative deviation corresponds to a very small absolute deviation which can be caused by small systematic effects. A pathological object in this subsample is the BL Lac RXJ1456.0+5048 which has a value for $`P_{ext}`$ of 5.4. It has been analyzed in a RASS-follow-up HRI observation by Nass (1998) and shows at most a very marginal extent in this observation with a ten times higher angular resolution. Therefore the extent seen in the present RASS analysis has to be spurious. We have also checked the mean off-axis position of the source photons as a signature of an imperfect scanning of the source which could produce a deviation of the mean PSF for the source observation compared to the average survey PSF, but found no obvious deviation. Therefore this case demonstrates that systematic effects in the broadening of the PSF for individual sources in the RASS exist, but they are obviously extremely rare. Subtracting the cases for which the extent is real, we find that less than 10% of the sources feature a spurious extent. Applying a similar test to an unbiased point source sample shows that the misclassification is usually less than about 5% (see Böhringer 1999 in preparation).

In Fig. 17 we have also marked the non-cluster X-ray sources which seem to be associated with an optical cluster either in projection or located in the cluster. There is no indication that these sources show a different distribution in the source quality parameters. Therefore the identification that in most of these sources the AGN or star is clearly the dominant X-ray source is supported by this result.

These results on the source quality can be compared with the prime selection criteria of this sample as extracted from RASS I. We recall that only sources which were characterized by a significantly large extent parameter obtained in the maximum likelihood analysis were included in the present sample. Using the new technique $`25\%`$ of the sources do not feature an extent. This could be partly due to the fact that the present method is sometimes less sensitive in recognizing the source extent for very compact sources since it does not use the detector position information and thus does not weight for photons imaged with different sharpness as does the maximum likelihood method. Looking at the nature of the sources we conclude that about 23% of the sources are genuine point sources and thus the failure rate of the RASS I extent classification is at least about 20%. The results displayed in Figs. 15 - 17 show that the present method provides a great improvement concerning the failure rate of the method. This justifies the use of these source quality parameters to assist the identification of the sources.

We have made use of the above results in the identification process. The criterion for classifying a source as a non-cluster source was one of the following:

i) The optical counterpart is a bright star ($`12.5`$ mag) and the source is not extended. This is justified by the finding of Voges et al. 1999 (in preparation) that there is a much less than 1% chance coincidence of a RASS X-ray source with such a bright star.

ii) There is an optically identified AGN at the source position and the source is not extended. No cluster is seen on the CCD images taken for this project.

iii) The source is a known, previously identified non-cluster X-ray source.

iv) The source is clearly point-like and has a soft hardness ratio deviation larger than $`3\sigma `$. There is no signature of an optical cluster in the digitized Palomar Sky Survey image or the CCD images taken for the project.

We noted 17 cases, where there is a signature of an optical cluster, but the other criteria are inconsistent with a cluster identification. These cases have been listed separately in Tables 3 and 4.

This identification scheme is only made possible by the extensive spectroscopic follow-up and almost complete CCD imaging of the targets in the sample of extended sources (no spectroscopy was done for those objects for which this information is already available from the literature or the CfA archives). A classification only by identification of clusters on optical images or exclusion of sources with spectroscopically identified AGN without further inspection would have failed in several cases.

## 6 Further analysis of the 9 - 14h study region

While the above results show that the source identification has reached a high level of reliability, there are serious concerns about the completeness of the present sample in terms of a purely flux-limited X-ray cluster sample, because the sample rests on the RASS I source extent selection criterion. There are two principle sources of incompleteness: i) medium distant and distant clusters may have too compact X-ray emission regions to be resolved as extended X-ray objects in the RASS and ii) the RASS maximum likelihood analysis may fail to recognize all the spatially resolved sources in the RASS as extended X-ray sources. Both sources of incompleteness affect the present sample. Figs. 2 and 16 show that there are galaxy clusters which appear as point-like X-ray sources for both analysis techniques, the standard RASS analysis and the method used here. In addition we will find below that there is a large fraction of significantly extended sources which are missed by RASS I.

In an attempt to check for the incompleteness of the RASS I sample we conduct two studies: we investigate what fraction of ACO clusters with X-ray emission is missing in the present sample and we search for extended sources in the RASS II data base with the new analysis technique and inspect their nature to find additional clusters or cluster candidates. Since this is meant as a statistical test we restrict the analysis to a subregion of the study area: the region of the northern sky between $`9^h`$ and $`14^h`$. The sky area of this region is 1.309 ster as compared to the total NORAS survey area of 4.134. In this right ascension range the $`|b_{II}|20\mathrm{deg}`$ band of the Milky Way is completely located at negative declinations. We restrict the cluster search by imposing an X-ray flux limit of $`1.6\times 10^{12}`$ erg s-1 cm-2.

Thus in the first step we have run our analysis on the sky positions in RASS II of the 901 clusters listed by Abell, Corwin, & Olowin (1989) in the sub-survey region. Ten clusters of this sample were missed in the analysis since RASS II has a too low exposure in the corresponding sky fields for a significant source detection (these clusters are: A917, A974, A986, A996, A999, A1011, A1042, A1057, A1128, A1554). 93 additional ACO clusters are detected above the flux limit. A closer inspection of the detections with the same procedures as described above revealed that 8 of the detections have most probably an AGN as the dominant X-ray source. These ACO clusters are: A763, A924, A1030, A1225, A1575, A1593, A1739, A1774. The results for the other 85 detections, where we identify the X-ray emission to originate in the cluster, are listed in Tables 6 and 7. The columns of these tables have the same meaning as those of Tables 1 and 5, respectively.

In the second step we have selected all the sources from the RASS II data base in the sub-survey region, reanalyzed them, and extracted all the sources with a flux $`1.6\times 10^{12}`$ erg s-1 cm-2 and an extent parameter $`P_{ext}2`$. In total there are 377 sources of which a large fraction is already contained in the NORAS I sample and the supplementary ACO sample. Again we find another fraction which is identified as double point sources or very bright point sources having a small absolute extent.

An inspection of all the remaining sources on the digitized sky images and literature data from data bases leads to a sample of 52 very promising candidates of which 21 can readily be identified as previously listed galaxy clusters. The latter list of identified cluster sources is given in Table 8 and 9. For the positive identification of the remaining candidates further optical observations within the ongoing NORAS survey are in progress.

To understand which of the two sources of incompleteness discussed above is more important for the loss of these additional cluster sources in the primary candidate list of the NORAS Survey, we plot in Fig. 18 the distribution of the extent parameters of the X-ray clusters of the two additional cluster lists. As we can see most of the additionally found ACO clusters (74.2%) feature an extent according to the new analysis technique. The second supplementary list consists by definition only of extended cluster sources. Therefore we have to conclude, that the extent flag in the RASS I data base is not only not very reliable but a large fraction of the well extended sources is also missed.

## 7 Discussion of the sample completeness

To test the completeness of the catalogue, a comparison can be made to the southern RASS cluster survey project, the REFLEX Survey (Böhringer et al. 1998). This sample has been constructed in a different way making extensive use of the COSMOS data base to correlate X-ray sources with the galaxy distribution. Therefore this sample does not rely on existing cluster catalogues nor on the selection of X-ray sources featuring an extent. Internal statistical estimates for the REFLEX sample suggest a completeness larger than 90% for the flux limit of $`F_X=3\times 10^{12}`$ erg s-1 cm-2. The number counts of the REFLEX survey and the NORAS survey are compared in Fig. 19. We note that the NORAS sample reaches a fraction of 50% of the REFLEX number counts at the REFLEX flux limit.

A large fraction of the missing clusters has been recovered by the supplementary sample in the study area. In Fig. 20 various subsamples of the combined cluster catalog in the 9h to 14h region are compared to the REFLEX Survey. While the cluster sample from Table 1 recovers with 40% an even smaller fraction of the sky density compared to the REFLEX Survey, 70% are reached if the ACO clusters are added and 82% are obtained for the combined sample. Thus there is still a fraction of clusters missing. This is easily understood, since the REFLEX sample contains a fraction of 22% of all objects which are not resolved as extended by the GCA analysis. We can expect that about 10 - 20% of the clusters for the REFLEX flux limit are neither listed as ACO clusters nor recognized as extended sources. Note that the combined sample in the study region completely recovers the previous RASS cluster sample by Ebeling et al. (1998) as discussed below. Most clusters not contained in Table 1 are easily found as ACO clusters and 7 further clusters show a clear extent.

Therefore to achieve a higher completeness in our continuing northern cluster survey we are, in addition to including known catalogued clusters with X-ray emission and newly classified extended X-ray sources, conducting further imaging of promising non-identified X-ray sources to recover the compact X-ray clusters missed in the previous searches.

## 8 Comparison with the northern Brightest Cluster Sample

In total 166 X-ray sources analyzed here overlap with the previous RASS galaxy cluster compilation by Ebeling et al. (1998). 142 sources coincide with the sources of Table 1, 22 sources with sources in Tables 6 and 8 for the 9h to 14h region, and two sources are identified with AGN in our analysis. Thus 40 sources compiled by Ebeling et al. are not included here (including the Virgo cluster). Since the two compilations are made with the same intention we compare the results of the two samples in some detail.

Fig. 21 shows a comparison of the X-ray fluxes determined by the two different methods used in the two surveys for the 166 cluster in common. Note that in our compilation the fluxes have not been corrected for the missing flux outside the measurement aperture. Therefore we show both results from the work of Ebeling et al. in the plots: the uncorrected measured fluxes (with open circles) and the corrected final fluxes (full circles). The agreement at high fluxes is very good and there is also quite good agreement for most sources. The scatter is increasing, however, towards lower fluxes. Mostly at lower fluxes we find a few sources with fluxes larger by factors up to 2 as determined by the VTP method compared to the present results. Note the bias introduced at low fluxes by the flux limit set in the Ebeling et al. sample that suppresses the cases where the VTP to GCA flux ratio is lower than one. Thus, what appears like a high bias of the VTP results at low flux in Fig. 21b is most probably explained by an increased scatter in the flux ratio with decreasing flux. Thus in general the agreement is good.

Two sources in the cluster list by Ebeling et al. (1998), A2318 and Z2701, are classified as AGN in our work. The first source appears as RXJ1905.7+7804 in Table 3. We have optically identified a Seyfert 1 galaxy at the source position. The X-ray source is pointlike and has a spectral hardness ratio that is too soft for a cluster with a 3.8$`\sigma `$ deviation. The X-ray source is also significantly offset from the optical cluster center. Thus we identify the X-ray source with the AGN. The second source was found in our search for additional extended sources in the 9h \- 14h region and is not catalogued here. It was dismissed because it is identified by as AGN by Bade et al. 1998. The spectral hardness ratio shows again a 4.5$`\sigma `$ deviation to the soft side. The KS-test yields a small extent of the source and an inspection of the X-ray image indicates a smaller emission contribution from the region of the optical cluster center. But the main contribution comes obviously from the AGN.

We can also make a comparison of the completeness of both surveys in the 9h \- 14h region. While we recover all the clusters in Ebeling et al. (except for Z2701 which is classified as AGN), two additional clusters are found in our search with a flux larger than $`L_X4.7\times 10^{12}`$ erg s-1 cm-2 (in addition the two Virgo galaxies M60 and M49 which are summed into the Virgo cluster in Ebeling et al.). Over the whole right ascension range we find 12 additional objects above the flux limit of Ebeling et al. These sources are RXCJ0005.3+1612 (A2703), RXCJ0209.5+1946 (A311), RXCJ0736.4+3925 (contains a BL Lac), RXCJ1121.7+0249 (SHK352), RXCJ1242.8+0241 (NGC4636), RXCJ1447.4+0827, RXCJ1501.2+0141, RXCJ1506.4+0136, RXCJ1617.5+3458 (NGC6107), RXCJ1718.1+7801 (A2271), RXCJ1742.8+3900, RXCJ1900.4+6958 (A2315). All the sources except for RXCJ1447.4+082 have a significant extent. The Abell clusters have fluxes within about 15% of the flux limit of Ebeling et al. (1998) and most of the remaining sources are nearby groups of galaxies being less rich than Abell clusters. This number of extra sources is still compatible with the claimed completeness of the Ebeling et al. (1998) sample. The above comparison with the results of the southern RASS analysis in the REFLEX sample indicates, however, that both samples are still less complete than the southern survey.

## 9 Discussion and Summary

Using the early results of the RASS we compiled an X-ray sample of galaxy clusters by selecting the RASS sources which featured a significant extent in the first standard processing of the RASS. The complete spectroscopic identification of these sources (as far as no identification was already available) leads to a compilation of a catalogue of 378 X-ray cluster sources.

A reanalysis of the X-ray properties of these sources shows that the X-ray source properties can successfully be used in the source identification process. In particular we found that in many cases the hardness ratio can be used to flag sources which are severely contaminated by an AGN. In this way we could also exclude previously identified X-ray clusters – as for example the two cases discussed in the previous section – from identification as cluster sources.

One of the major points of concern of such catalogs of X-ray clusters is the contamination of the observed X-ray luminosity by AGN. As commented in Section 4.1 there are all combinations of clusters and optically identified AGN or radio galaxies: AGN which do not provide a significant contribution to the cluster X-ray flux, AGN that contribute partially, and AGN which completely outshine the clusters. These cases can only definitely be distinguished if high resolution X-ray images or X-ray spectra of high quality are available. E.g. ROSAT HRI observations provide the means for this distinction, but they are only available for a small fraction of the sources for survey sizes of the present survey. Lack of additional X-ray data creates a twofold danger. Since X-ray sources are often identified with the most plausible nearby optical counterpart, there is a significant risk that the cluster ID will be discarded when an AGN is found near or within the error circle. Conversely, an AGN which is the primary X-ray emitter may not be recognized and the emission falsely associated to the cluster.

Also in the present case this problem of AGN cluster associations cannot be solved in each case and we still expect some hidden misclassifications which will be hard to find until the whole sample is probed more deeply in X-rays. However, we believe that the remaining uncertainties are small and not harmful for the application of our sample for cosmological statistical studies and we will substantiate this believe in the following. First of all we note that $`74.4\%`$ of the sources in the catalog in Table 1 are sources recognized as significantly extended. This requires a major contribution to the X-ray emission from diffuse cluster sources. Thus for this source population we have a very high reliability that these sources are true X-ray clusters. We can now - as shown in Fig. 22 - compare the spectral properties of these extended cluster sources to those cluster sources where no significant extent could be established in terms of the parameter $`P_{ext}`$. We note that the two distributions are hardly different. Also both distributions are almost symmetric around unity, as would be ideally expected. For some reason the larger sample of extended sources shows a broader distribution of the $`\mathrm{\Delta }HR`$ parameter. This seems to be caused by clusters with a larger number of photons for which a small systematic error in the $`HR`$ estimate leads to a significant additional scatter in $`\mathrm{\Delta }HR`$ in units of $`\sigma `$ and also the low temperature groups will add to this scatter. A comparison to the non-cluster sources shows a very large difference in the spectral parameter distribution, however. While the non-cluster sources have a median deviation of the parameter $`\mathrm{\Delta }HR`$ of $`4.6\sigma `$ the X-ray pointlike sources identified as clusters have a median $`\mathrm{\Delta }HR0.02\sigma `$.

We can explore the contamination effect in somewhat more detail by considering the effect on a typical cluster source. The median number of source photons for the clusters listed in Table 1 is about 94 source photons. For such a source the typical uncertainty in the measured hardness ratio is about $`\delta HR0.12`$. An AGN with median properties easily shows a deviation of $`34\sigma `$ in the $`\mathrm{\Delta }HR`$ parameter. Even if the contamination fraction by AGN is only 50% or 25% the typical shift in the parameter of $`\mathrm{\Delta }HR1.7\sigma `$ and $`0.9\sigma `$ still constitutes a recognizable distortion of the $`\mathrm{\Delta }HR`$-distribution. Another test is shown in Fig. 22b. Here we compare the distribution of the $`\mathrm{\Delta }HR`$ values for the clusters with the sample of point like clusters artificially contaminated by removing 20% of the cluster sources and replacing them by a statistical sample of non-cluster sources. There is a clearly visible change in the distribution of the spectral parameters. A KS test shows that the two distributions are still only distinguishable at the $`90\%`$ level. A test with a similar contamination of 40%, however, leads to a clear difference with a KS probability for the two samples being statistically the same of $`10^4`$. Since a 20% contamination of the point like clusters corresponds to a contamination of about 5% of the total sample we expect that the real misclassification fraction is not larger than this percentage.

The present X-ray cluster catalog provides a wealth of new data. 98 new cluster sources are listed in Table 1 and in addition new X-ray luminous groups associated with known giant ellipticals are reported in Table 1 and 8.

Test searches for additional X-ray clusters in the 9h \- 14h region have shown that both, the selection of extended sources by the RASS standard analysis and the finding of X-ray clusters by selecting extended sources is quite incomplete in terms of the compilation of flux-limited X-ray cluster catalogues - except for very high flux limits. We have shown that probably most of the missing clusters can be recovered by using a better search algorithm for extended sources and by screening the optically known clusters. This may not be sufficient to produce a high quality, highly complete catalogue. Further screening of RASS sources, including CCD imaging of sources not visibly extended in X-rays, is required. The completion of the NORAS sample thus requires additional imaging and spectroscopic observations.

###### Acknowledgements.

We like to thank first of all the ROSAT Team who helped in providing the RASS data fields, in discussions about the RASS source properties, and by providing the EXSAS software which was essential for the studies. We like to thank in particular J. Engelhauser, A. Vogler, C. Rosso, and C. Izzo for help with the data and programs. We would also like to thank the remote observers at FLWO, Perry Berlind and Jim Peters, for observations made on the 1.5-m telescope, and Susan Tokraz for help in the data reduction. This work has made use of the SIMBAD data base operated at CDS, Strasbourg. In addition this research also made use of the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED), which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with NASA. H.B. and P.S. acknowledge the support by the Verbundforschung under grant No. 50 OR 93065 and 50 OR 970835, respectively. JPH and JM were supported by the Smithonian Institution.