The IRAS revised bright galaxy sample

IRAS flux densities, redshifts, and infrared luminosities are reported for all sources identified in the IRAS Revised Bright Galaxy Sample (RBGS), a complete flux-limited survey of all extragalactic objects with total 60 mum flux density greater than 5.24 Jy, covering the entire sky surveyed by IRAS at Galactic latitudes \b\ > 5degrees. The RBGS includes 629 objects, with median and mean sample redshifts of 0.0082 and 0.0126, respectively, and a maximum redshift of 0.0876. The RBGS supersedes the previous two-part IRAS Bright Galaxy Samples (BGS(1)+BGS(2)), which were compiled before the final (Pass 3) calibration of the IRAS Level 1 Archive in 1990 May. The RBGS also makes use of more accurate and consistent automated methods to measure the flux of objects with extended emission. The RBGS contains 39 objects that were not present in the BGS(1)+BGS(2), and 28 objects from the BGS(1)+BGS(2) have been dropped from RBGS because their revised 60 mum flux densities are not greater than 5.24 Jy. Comparison of revised flux measurements for sources in both surveys shows that most flux differences are in the range similar to5%-25%, although some faint sources at 12 and 25 mum differ by as much as a factor of 2. Basic properties of the RBGS sources are summarized, including estimated total infrared luminosities, as well as updates to cross identifications with sources from optical galaxy catalogs established using the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database. In addition, an atlas of images from the Digitized Sky Survey with overlays of the IRAS position uncertainty ellipse and annotated scale bars is provided for ease in visualizing the optical morphology in context with the angular and metric size of each object. The revised bolometric infrared luminosity function, phi(L-ir), for infrared-bright galaxies in the local universe remains best fit by a double power law, phi(L) proportional to L-alpha, with alpha = -0.6(+/-0.1) and alpha = -2.2(+/-0.1) below and above the "characteristic" infrared luminosity L-ir* similar to 10(10.5) Lcircle dot, respectively. A companion paper provides IRAS High Resolution (HIRES) processing of over 100 RBGS sources where improved spatial resolution often provides better IRAS source positions or allows for deconvolution of close galaxy pairs.