The Distance to the Large Magellanic Cloud from the Eclipsing Binary HV 2274

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Abstract
The distance to the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is crucial for the calibration of the cosmic distance scale. We derive a distance to the LMC based on an analysis of ground-based photometry and Hubble Space Telescope (HST)-based spectroscopy and spectrophotometry of the LMC-eclipsing binary system HV 2274. Analysis of the optical light curve and the HST/Goddard High-Resolution Spectrograph, radial velocity curve provides the masses and radii of the binary components. Analysis of the HST/Faint Object Spectrograph, UV/optical spectrophotometry provides the temperatures of the component stars and the interstellar extinction of the system. When combined, these data yield a distance to the binary system. After correcting for the location of HV 2274 with respect to the center of the LMC, we find dLMC = 45.7 ± 1.6 kpc or (V0-Mv)LMC = 18.30 ± 0.07 mag. This result, which is immune to the metallicity-induced zero-point uncertainties that have plagued other techniques, lends strong support to the "short" LMC distance scale as derived from a number of independent methods.