We present preliminary results from the first 3 months of the Swift Burst Alert Telescope ( BAT ) high galactic latitude survey in the 14–195 keV band .
The survey reaches a flux of \sim 10 ^ { -11 } erg cm ^ { -2 } s ^ { -1 } and has \sim 2.7 ′ ( 90 % confidence ) positional uncertainties for the faintest sources .
This represents the most sensitive survey to date in this energy band .
These data confirm the conjectures that a high energy selected AGN sample would have very different properties from those selected in other bands and represent a ‘ true ’ sample of the AGN population .
We have identified 86 % of the 66 high-latitude sources .
12 are galactic type sources and 44 can be identified with previously known AGN .
All but 5 of the AGN have archival X-ray spectra , enabling the estimation of line of sight column densities and other spectral properties .
Both of the z > 0.11 objects are Blazars .
The median redshift of the others ( excluding radio-loud objects ) is 0.012 .
We find that the column density distribution of these AGN is bimodal with 64 % of the non-blazar sources having column densities N _ { H } \geq 10 ^ { 22 } cm ^ { -2 } .
None of the sources with \log L _ { X } > 43.5 ( c.g.s .
units ) show high column densities and very few of the lower L _ { X } sources have low column densities .
Based on these data , we expect the final BAT catalog to have > 200 AGN and reach fluxes of less than \sim 10 ^ { -11 } erg cm ^ { -2 } s ^ { -1 } over the entire sky .