Optically bright active galactic nuclei in the ROSAT-Faint source catalogue

To build a large, optically bright, X-ray selected AGN sample we have correlated the ROSAT-FSC catalogue of X-ray sources with the USNO catalogue limited to objects brighter than $O=16.5$ and then with the APS database. Each of the 3212 coincidences was classified using the slitless Hamburg spectra. 493 objects were found to be extended and 2719 starlike. Using both the extended objects and the galaxies known from published catalogues we built up a sample of 185 galaxies with $O_{\rm APS}