The Trigonometric Parallax of Cygnus X-1

Abstract

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+0.12 – 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–1, indicating that the binary did not experience a large "kick" at formation.