THE TRIGONOMETRIC PARALLAX OF CYGNUS X-1
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[superscript +0.12] [subscript – 0.11] kpc was obtained from a trigonometric parallax measurement using the Very Long Baseline Array....
| Main Authors: | , , , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | en_US |
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IOP Publishing
2015
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/95668 |
| _version_ | 1811089237087354880 |
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| author | Reid, Mark J. McClintock, Jeffrey E. Narayan, Ramesh Gou, Lijun Orosz, Jerome A. Remillard, Ronald A |
| author2 | MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research |
| author_facet | MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research Reid, Mark J. McClintock, Jeffrey E. Narayan, Ramesh Gou, Lijun Orosz, Jerome A. Remillard, Ronald A |
| author_sort | Reid, Mark J. |
| collection | MIT |
| description | 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[superscript +0.12] [subscript – 0.11] kpc was obtained from a trigonometric parallax measurement using the Very Long Baseline Array. The position measurements are also sensitive to the 5.6 day 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[superscript –1], indicating that the binary did not experience a large "kick" at formation. |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T14:16:00Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/95668 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| language | en_US |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T14:16:00Z |
| publishDate | 2015 |
| publisher | IOP Publishing |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/956682022-09-28T19:34:46Z THE TRIGONOMETRIC PARALLAX OF CYGNUS X-1 Reid, Mark J. McClintock, Jeffrey E. Narayan, Ramesh Gou, Lijun Orosz, Jerome A. Remillard, Ronald A MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research Remillard, Ronald Alan 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[superscript +0.12] [subscript – 0.11] kpc was obtained from a trigonometric parallax measurement using the Very Long Baseline Array. The position measurements are also sensitive to the 5.6 day 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[superscript –1], indicating that the binary did not experience a large "kick" at formation. National Science Foundation (U.S.) 2015-02-26T18:22:04Z 2015-02-26T18:22:04Z 2011-11 2011-06 Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle 0004-637X 1538-4357 http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/95668 Reid, Mark J., Jeffrey E. McClintock, Ramesh Narayan, Lijun Gou, Ronald A. Remillard, and Jerome A. Orosz. “THE TRIGONOMETRIC PARALLAX OF CYGNUS X-1.” The Astrophysical Journal 742, no. 2 (November 9, 2011): 83. © 2011 The American Astronomical Society en_US http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/0004-637x/742/2/83 Astrophysical Journal Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use. application/pdf IOP Publishing American Astronomical Society |
| spellingShingle | Reid, Mark J. McClintock, Jeffrey E. Narayan, Ramesh Gou, Lijun Orosz, Jerome A. Remillard, Ronald A THE TRIGONOMETRIC PARALLAX OF CYGNUS X-1 |
| title | THE TRIGONOMETRIC PARALLAX OF CYGNUS X-1 |
| title_full | THE TRIGONOMETRIC PARALLAX OF CYGNUS X-1 |
| title_fullStr | THE TRIGONOMETRIC PARALLAX OF CYGNUS X-1 |
| title_full_unstemmed | THE TRIGONOMETRIC PARALLAX OF CYGNUS X-1 |
| title_short | THE TRIGONOMETRIC PARALLAX OF CYGNUS X-1 |
| title_sort | trigonometric parallax of cygnus x 1 |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/95668 |
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