The ROSAT north ecliptic pole survey X-ray data

In the ROSAT All-Sky Survey, an 80.7 deg(2) region near the north ecliptic pole (NEP) constitutes the deepest contiguous observation of the X-ray sky. Four hundred and forty-five unique sources have been detected above a flux of similar to2 x 10(-14) ergs s(-1) cm(-2) (0.5- 2.0 keV). The X-ray data for each source provide a likelihood of existence, position and position er ror, count rate and error, background count rate at the source position, ex posure time, two hardness ratios and their errors, and a measure of extent and likelihood of nonzero extent. We describe the range and statistics of X -ray properties exhibited by the NEP sources and the accuracy with which th ey have been determined, concentrating on the flux measurement of extended galaxy cluster X-ray sources. We show two examples of sources whose X-ray m orphology is useful in their optical identification.