The Distances of the Magellanic Clouds

Abstract

The present status of our knowledge of the distances to the Magellanic Clouds is evaluated from a post-Hipparcos perspective. After a brief summary of the effects of structure, reddening, age and metallicity, the primary distance indicators for the Large Magellanic Cloud are reviewed: The SN 1987A ring, Cepheids, RR Lyraes, Mira variables, and Eclipsing Binaries. Distances derived via these methods are weighted and combined to produce final "best" estimates for the Magellanic Clouds distance moduli.

Invited review article to appear in ``Post Hipparcos Cosmic Candles'', F. Caputo & A. Heck (Eds.), Kluwer Academic Publ., Dordrecht, in press

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• Very accurate Distances and Radii of Open Cluster Cepheids from a Near-Infrared Surface Brightness Technique
• Is There a Difference in Luminosity between Field and Cluster RR Lyrae Variables?
• WFPC2 Observations of the Small Magellanic Cloud Intermediate-Age Populous Cluster NGC 416
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Cited by in corpus (30)

• Final Results from the Hubble Space Telescope Key Project to Measure the Hubble Constant
• New Period-Luminosity and Period-Color Relations of Classical Cepheids: I. Cepheids in the Galaxy
• The Parkes HI Survey of the Magellanic System
• Astrometry with Hubble Space Telescope: A Parallax of the Fundamental Distance Calibrator RR Lyrae
• Supernova type Ia luminosities, their dependence on second parameters, and the value of H_0
• Theoretical models for classical Cepheids. VIII. Effects of helium and heavy elements abundance on the Cepheid distance scale
• The Distances to Open Clusters from Main-Sequence Fitting. IV. Galactic Cepheids, the LMC, and the Local Distance Scale
• Unusual CO Line Ratios and kinematics in the N83/N84 Region of the Small Magellanic Cloud
• Multibeam Maser Survey of methanol and excited OH in the Magellanic Clouds: new detections and maser abundance estimates
• The Star Formation History of NGC 6822
• RR Lyrae variables in the dwarf spheroidal galaxy Leo I
• The Hubble Constant and the Expansion Age of the Universe
• Masers associated with high-mass star formation regions in the Large Magellanic Cloud
• The Large Magellanic Cloud globular cluster NGC 1866: new data, new models, new analysis
• The Arecibo Methanol Maser Galactic Plane Survey - III: Distances and Luminosities
• Warm Ionized Gas Revealed in the Magellanic Bridge Tidal Remnant: Constraining the Baryon Content and the Escaping Ionizing Photons around Dwarf Galaxies
• Cepheid Mass-Luminosity Relations from the Magellanic Clouds
• A "pulsational" distance determination for the Large Magellanic Cloud
• GAIA and the Extragalactic Distance Scale
• Distances to Local Group Galaxies
• Theoretical Models for Classical Cepheids: IV. Mean Magnitudes and Colors and the Evaluation of Distance, Reddening and Metallicity
• Down-the-barrel and transverse observations of the Large Magellanic Cloud: evidence for a symmetrical galactic wind on the near and far sides of the galaxy
• Results of the ESO-SEST Key Programme on CO in the Magellanic Clouds. IX. The giant LMC HII region complex N11
• A Direct Distance to the LMC Cepheid HV 12198 from the Infrared Surface Brightness Technique
• The Cepheid Period-Luminosity relation and the maser distance to NGC 4258
• The Distance of the Large Magellanic Cloud Cluster NGC 1866
• Cepheid variables in the LMC cluster NGC 1866. I. New BVRI CCD photometry
• Mapping the Supernovae Driven Winds of the Large Magellanic Cloud in H$\alpha$ Emission I
• The brightness of SN 1991T and the uniformity of decline-rate and colour corrected absolute magnitudes of supernovae Ia
• Ho from Type Ia Supernovae