  We present a summary of an identification program of the more than 2000 X-ray
sources detected during the ROSAT All-Sky Survey (Voges et al. 1999) at high
galactic latitude, |b| > 30 degr, with countrate above 0.2 s-1. This program,
termed the ROSAT Bright Survey RBS, is to more than 99.5% complete. A
sub-sample of 931 sources with countrate above 0.2 s-1 in the hard spectral
band between 0.5 and 2.0 keV is to 100% identified. The total survey area
comprises 20391 sq.deg at a flux limit of 2.4 \times 10^{-12} erg/cmsq/s in the
0.5 -- 2.0 keV band. About 1500 sources of the complete sample could be
identified by correlating the RBS with SIMBAD and the NED. The remaining 500
sources were identified by low-resolution optical spectroscopy and CCD imaging
utilizing telescopes at La Silla, Calar Alto, Zelenchukskaya and Mauna Kea.
Apart from completely untouched sources, catalogued clusters and galaxies
without published redshift as well as catalogued galaxies with unusual high
X-ray luminosity were included in the spectroscopic identification program.
Details of the observations with an on-line presentation of the finding charts
and the optical spectra will be published separately. Here we summarize our
identifications in a table which contains optical and X-ray information for
each source. As a result we present the most massive complete sample of X-ray
selected AGNs with a total of 669 members and a well populated X-ray selected
sample of 302 clusters of galaxies with redshifts up to 0.70. Three fields
studied by us remain without optical counterpart (RBS0378, RBS1223, RBS1556).
While the first is a possible X-ray transient, the two latter are isolated
neutron star candidates (Motch et al. 1999, Schwope et al. 1999).

Astrophysics