Large Magellanic Cloud Distance from Cepheid Variables using Least Squares Solutions

TL;DR

This paper estimates the distance to the Large Magellanic Cloud using Cepheid variables and least squares solutions, achieving results consistent with established values.

Contribution

It introduces a method combining infrared surface brightness and large Cepheid datasets with least squares to determine LMC distance.

Findings

LMC distance modulus is approximately 18.48-18.49 mag.

Results are consistent with the commonly adopted 18.50 mag.

Both linear and broken P-L relations yield similar distances.

Abstract

Distance to the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is determined using the Cepheid variables in the LMC. We combine the individual LMC Cepheid distances obtained from the infrared surface brightness method and a dataset with a large number of LMC Cepheids. Using the standard least squares method, the LMC distance modulus can be found from the ZP offsets of these two samples. We have adopted both a linear P-L relation and a ``broken'' P-L relation in our calculations. The resulting LMC distance moduli are 18.48+-0.03 mag and 18.49+-0.04 mag (random error only), respectively, which are consistent to the adopted 18.50 mag in the literature.