2011ApJ...738...78X

We present a detailed study of the X-ray dust scattering halo of the black hole candidate Cygnus X-1 based on two Chandra High Energy Transmission Gratings Spectrometer observations. Using 18 different dust models, including one modified by us (eponymously dubbed XLNW), we probe the interstellar medium between us and this source. A consistent description of the cloud properties along the line of sight (LOS) that describes at the same time the halo radial profile, the halo light curves, and the column density from source spectroscopy is best achieved with a small subset of these models. Combining the studies of the halo radial profile and the halo light curves, we favor a geometric distance to Cygnus X-1 of d = 1.81±0.09 kpc. Our study also shows that there is a dense cloud, which contributes ∼50% of the dust grains along the LOS to Cygnus X-1, located at ∼1.6 kpc from us. The remainder of the dust along the LOS is close to the black hole binary.