Optical spectroscopy of microquasar candidates at low Galactic latitudes

We report optical spectroscopic observations of a sample of 6 low-galactic latitude microquasar candidates selected by cross-identification of X-ray and radio point source catalogs for |b|<5 degrees. Two objects resulted to be of clear extragalactic origin, as an obvious cosmologic redshift has been measured from their emission lines. For the rest, none exhibits a clear stellar-like spectrum as would be expected for genuine Galactic microquasars. Their featureless spectra are consistent with being extragalactic in origin although two of them could be also highly reddened stars. The apparent non-confirmation of our candidates suggests that the population of persistent microquasar systems in the Galaxy is more rare than previously believed. If none of them is galactic, the upper limit to the space density of new Cygnus X-3-like microquasars within 15 kpc would be 1.1\times10^{-12} per cubic pc. A similar upper limit for new LS 5039-like systems within 4 kpc is estimated to be 5.6\times10^{-11} per cubic pc.