The bright SHARC survey: The cluster catalog 1

We present the Bright SHARC (Serendipitous High-Redshift Archival ROSAT Cluster) Survey, which is an objective search for serendipitously detected extended X-ray sources in 460 deep ROSAT PSPC pointings. The Bright SHARC Survey covers an area of 178.6 deg² and has yielded 374 extended sources. We discuss the X-ray data reduction, the candidate selection and present results from our on-going optical follow-up campaign. The optical follow-up concentrates on the brightest 94 of the 374 extended sources and is now 97% complete. We have identified 37 clusters of galaxies, for which we present redshifts and luminosities. The clusters span a redshift range of 0.0696 < z < 0.83 and a luminosity range of 0.065 < L_x < 8.3 × 10⁴⁴ ergs s^-1 [0.5-2.0 keV] (assuming H₀ = 50 km s^-1 Mpc^-1 and q₀ = 0.5). Twelve of the clusters have redshifts greater than z = 0.3, eight of which are at luminosities brighter than L_x = 3 × 10⁴⁴ ergs s^-1. Seventeen of the 37 optically confirmed Bright SHARC clusters have not been listed in any previously published catalog. We also report the discovery of three candidate "fossil groups" of the kind proposed by Ponman et al.