ON THE NEAR-INFRARED IDENTIFICATION OF THE INTEGRAL SOURCE IGR J16328–4726

The aim of this work is to identify the infrared (IR) counterpart of the Galactic high-mass X-ray binary IGR J16328–4726 discovered by the INTEGRAL satellite, and to derive the extinction and distance to the system. We present new deep sub-arcsecond JHK_s imaging and low-resolution near-IR spectroscopy in the 1.5 and 2.4 μm range of IGR J16328–4726. We report the presence of two near-IR stellar sources separated by about 1.″8 at the location of the unresolved 2MASS source J16323791–4723409, previously considered to be the near-IR counterpart of the X-ray source. From the analysis of their near-IR colors and spectra as well as accurate positions, we uniquely identify the true IR counterpart of IGR J16328–4726. Our 1.5–2.4 μm spectrum of this star is consistent with the published classification O8Iafpe. Assuming this, and in combination with new JHK_s photometry, a reddening A_V = 23.6 ± 0.7 and a distance of 7.2 ± 0.3 kpc from the Sun are derived