The Distance to the Large Magellanic Cloud

Abstract

A summary of recent Large Magellanic Cloud distance determinations mu(LMC) is presented, with an eye towards pinpointing the source(s) of the resulting large discrepancies encountered between some of the techniques. Thirty-eight recent (1998-1999) measurements of mu(LMC) are highlighted, the extrema for which (18.07 versus 18.74) are inconsistent with one another at the 3-sigma level. The lack of overlap between the results of many of the techniques, simply employing the authors' quoted uncertainties, is a clear indication that unrecognized uncertainties, both random and systematic, plague many of the published results. While mu(LMC) almost certainly lies within 13% of 18.5 (i.e., between 18.20 and 18.75), to those of us outside the LMC ``community'', no single compelling argument has been put forth that reconciles the wildly disparate values presented thus far. A 13% uncertainty in the LMC distance corresponds to a 13% uncertainty in the Cepheid-based extragalactic distance scale.