The Araucaria Project. The Distance of the Large Magellanic Cloud from Near-Infrared Photometry of RR Lyrae Variables

Abstract

We have obtained deep infrared $J$ and $K$ band observations of five fields located in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) bar with the ESO New Technology Telescope equipped with the SOFI infrared camera. In our fields, 65 RR Lyrae stars catalogued by the OGLE collaboration were identified. Using different theoretical and empirical calibrations of the period-luminosity-metallicity relation, we find consistent LMC distance moduli values. Since the observed fields are situated very close to the center of the LMC, the correction for the tilt of the LMC bar with respect to the line of sight is negligible. Our adopted best true distance modulus to the LMC of $18.58\pm 0.03$ (statistical) $\pm$ 0.11 (systematic) mag agrees very well with most independent determinations to this galaxy.

30 pages, including 5 figures and 8 tables. AJ submitted and accepted

References in corpus (4)

• A new calibration of Galactic Cepheid Period-Luminosity relations from B to K bands, and a comparison to LMC PL relations
• A Problem with the Clustering of Recent Measures of the Distance to the Large Magellanic Cloud
• The RR Lyrae Period - K Luminosity relation for Globular Clusters: an observational approach
• The Araucaria Project. Near-Infrared Photometry of Cepheid Variables in the Sculptor Galaxy NGC 55

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