
TL;DR
This paper critically reviews distance measurements of galactic microquasars GRO J1655-40 and A0620-00, proposing that their distances are more uncertain than previously thought, and suggests A0620-00 may be the closest black hole to the Sun.
Contribution
It provides a detailed critique of existing distance estimation methods and introduces new analyses that suggest A0620-00 could be closer than previously believed.
Findings
GRO J1655-40 is likely less than 2 kpc away, not 3.2 kpc.
A0620-00's distance estimates are uncertain and possibly closer than 1 kpc.
A0620-00 may be the closest black hole to the Sun.
Abstract
We examine the distance of the two galactic microquasars GRO J1655-40 and A0620-00, which are potentially the two closest black holes to the Sun. We aim to provide a picture as wide and complete as possible of the problem of measuring the distance of microquasars in our Galaxy. The purpose of this work is to fairly and critically review in great detail every distance method used for these two microquasars in order to show that the distances of probably all microquasars in our galaxy are much more uncertain than currently admitted. Moreover, we show that many confirmations of quantitative results are often entangled and rely on very uncertain measurements. We also present a new determination of the maximum distance of GRO J1655-40 using red clump giant stars, and show that it confirms our earlier result of a distance less than 2 kpc instead of 3.2 kpc. Since it then becomes more likely…
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