A ROSAT PSPC X-ray survey of the small magellanic cloud

We present the results of a systematic search for point-like and moderately extended soft (0.1 - 2.4 keV) X-ray sources in a raster of nine pointings covering a field of 8.95 deg(2) and performed with the ROSAT PSPC between October 1991 and October 1993 in the direction of the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC). We detect 248 objects which we include in the first version of our SMC catalogue of soft X-ray sources. We set up seven source classes defined by selections in the count rate, hardness ratio and source extent. We find five high luminosity super-soft sources (1E 0035.4 - 7230, 1E 0056.8 - 7146, RX J0048.4 - 7332, RX J0058.6 - 7146 and RX J0103 - 7254), one low-luminosity super-soft source RX J0059.6 - 7138 correlating with the planetary nebula L357, 51 candidate hard X-ray binaries including eight bright hard X-ray binary candidates, 19 supernova remnants (SNRs), 19 candidate foreground stars and 53 candidate background active galactic nuclei (and quasars). We give a likely classification for similar to 60% of the catalogued sources. The total count rate of the detected point-like and moderately extended sources in our catalogue is 6.9 +/- 0.3 s(-1), comparable to the background subtracted total rate from the integrated field of similar to 6.1 +/- 0.1 s(-1).