The Trigonometric Parallax of Cygnus X-1

Details The Trigonometric Parallax of Cygnus X-1 The Trigonometric Parallax of Cygnus X-1

2011-06-18

arxiv.org/abs/1106.3688v2

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena

Paper I of three papers on Cygnus X-1; 13 pages including 3 figures and 2 tables, ApJ in press

Scientific paper

We report a direct and accurate measurement of the distance to the X-ray binary Cygnus X-1, which contains the first black hole to be discovered. The distance of 1.86 (-0.11,+0.12) kpc was obtained from a trigonometric parallax measurement using the Very Long Baseline Array. The position measurements are also sensitive to the 5.6 d binary orbit and we determine the orbit to be clockwise on the sky. We also measured the proper motion of Cygnus X-1 which, when coupled to the distance and Doppler shift, gives the three-dimensional space motion of the system. When corrected for differential Galactic rotation, the non-circular (peculiar) motion of the binary is only about 21 km/s, indicating that the binary did not experience a large "kick" at formation.

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