The Distance to the Large Magellanic Cloud from Eclipsing Binaries II. HV 982

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  • 25 October 2000
Abstract
We have determined the distance to a second eclipsing binary system (EB) in the Large Magellanic Cloud, HV982 (~B1 IV-V + ~B1 IV-V). The measurement of the distance --- among other properties of the system --- is based on optical photometry and spectroscopy and space-based UV/optical spectrophotometry. The analysis combines the ``classical'' EB study of light and radial velocity curves, which yield the stellar masses and radii, with a new analysis of the observed energy distribution, which yields the effective temperature, metallicity, and reddening of the system plus the distance ``attenuation factor'', essentially (radius/distance)^2. Combining the results gives the distance to the system, which is 45.6 +/- 2.1 kpc. This distance determination is extremely robust. It consists of a detailed study of well-understood objects (B stars) in a well-understood evolutionary phase (core H burning), and is free of the biases and systematic uncertainties that plague various other techniques. After correcting for the location of HV982, we find a distance to the optical center of the LMC's bar of d(LMC) = 45.9 +/- 2.1 kpc or (V-Mv)= 18.31 mag. This result is entirely consistent with our earlier result for the EB HV2274, which yielded (V-Mv) = 18.30 +/- 0.07 mag. These results argue strongly in favor of the ``short'' LMC distance scale.

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