In this work we describe a large new sample of contact binary stars extracted in a uniform manner from sky patrol data taken by the ROTSE-I telescope .
Extensive ROTSE-I light curve data is combined with J , H , and K band near-infrared data taken from the Two Micron All-Sky Survey ( 2MASS ) to add color information .
Contact binaries candidates are selected using the observed period-color relation .
Candidates are confirmed by visual examination of the light curves .
To enhance the utility of this catalog , we derive a new J–H period-color-luminosity relation and use this to estimate distances for the entire catalog .
From these distance estimates we derive an estimated contact binary space density of 1.7 \pm 0.6 \times 10 ^ { -5 } pcs ^ { -3 } .