sxrbg: ROSAT X-Ray Background Tool

The ROSAT X-Ray Background Tool (sxrbg) calculates the average X-ray background count rate and statistical uncertainty in each of the six standard bands of the ROSAT All-Sky Survey (RASS) diffuse background maps (R1, R2, R4, R5, R6, R7) for a specified astronomical position and a search region consisting of either a circle with a specified radius or an annulus with specified inner and outer radii centered on the position. The values returned by the tool are in units of 10^-6 counts/second/arcminute^2. sxrbg can also create a count-rate-based spectrum file which can be used with XSpec (ascl:9910.005) to calculate fluxes and offers support for counts statistics (cstat), an alternative method for generating a background spectrum. HEASoft (ascl:1408.004) is a prerequisite for building. The code is in the public domain.