THE HAMBURG ESO SURVEY FOR BRIGHT QSOS .1. SURVEY DESIGN AND CANDIDATE SELECTION PROCEDURE

We report about the first phase of a wide-angle survey for bright QSOs (12.5 less than or similar to B less than or similar to 17.5) in the southern hemisphere, based on objective prism plates taken with the ES O Schmidt telescope over an effective area of similar to 1000 deg(2). After digitisation, the extracted spectra were searched for quasar can didates in a largely automated two-stage procedure. Several selection criteria, such as UV excess or presence of emission lines, were applie d simultaneously to the databases. Thanks to the high spectral resolut ion of the spectra, the stellar contamination in the candidate sets co uld be efficiently kept low. Follow-up spectroscopy has yielded 160 ne wly discovered QSOs and Seyfert 1 galaxies, plus a variety of other in teresting galactic and extragalactic objects. Although the present QSO sample is not statistically ''complete'' insofar as it has no well-de fined flux limit, there is no evidence for strong redshift-dependent s election biases. The extension of the survey over an area of 5000 deg( 2) and the construction of flux-limited subsamples are under way.