# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

Determination of the distance to the Large Magellanic Cloud is one of the most important problems of the modern astrophysics. The extragalactic distance scale based on Cepheids is tied to the LMC distance (Kennicutt, Freedman & Mould 1995) and therefore any error in the distance determination to the LMC propagates to extragalactic distances.

Unfortunately the distance to the LMC has been a subject of controversy for many years. The widely accepted distance modulus to this galaxy is equal to $`mM=18.50\pm 0.10`$ mag based on Cepheid period-luminosity relation (Laney & Stobie 1994) and some determinations from the SN1987A light echo (e.g., Panagia et al. 1997). The latter method is in principle a precise geometric technique. It suffers, however, in this case from insufficient quality observations at crucial moments after supernova eruption and many modeling assumptions.

On the other hand smaller, short distance modulus to the LMC was determined from another standard candle – RR Lyr stars. The difference amounts to about $`0.2÷0.4`$ mag (Popowski & Gould 1998, Udalski 1998a). Additional support for the short distance scale to the LMC was provided by determination based on the red clump stars method proposed by Paczyński & Stanek (1998). Preliminary distance modulus obtained with this method was found to be about 18.1 mag (Udalski et al. 1998, Stanek, Zaritsky and Harris 1998) with the final value of $`mM=18.18\pm 0.06`$ mag (Udalski 1998b). It should be noted that the red clump stars are the only standard candle calibrated with precise parallaxes of hundreds of nearby stars measured by Hipparcos.

The possible solution of the LMC distance controversy should be found by distance determination with another reliable standard candle. Eclipsing binary stars seem to be the most promising candidates (Paczyński 1997). This method is largely geometric, free from possible population effects influencing other standard candles. Eclipsing binaries are very common in the LMC, in particular large samples of such stars are found as a by-product of microlensing searches (Grison et al. 1994, Alcock et al. 1997). Accuracy of distance of a few percent should be achieved when good quality observations are available.

Recently Guinan et al. (1998) presented the first determination of the distance to the LMC with eclipsing binary HV2274. This system seems to be well suited for distance determination. Using photometry of Watson et al. (1992), radial velocity curve determined from HST observations and temperatures of both components as well as interstellar reddening derived from the blue and UV spectrum from the HST/FOS, Guinan et al. (1998) obtained the distance modulus of HV2274 equal to $`mM=18.47\pm 0.07`$ mag consistent with the long distance to the LMC.

A closer look at the parameters of HV2274 determined by Guinan et al. (1998), in particular the interstellar reddening, raises some doubts on robustness of method they applied. $`E(BV)=0.083\pm 0.006`$ mag obtained by Guinan et al. (1998) is very low and with the average foreground (Galactic) reddening towards the LMC: $`E(BV)_{\mathrm{for}}=0.075`$ mag (Schlegel, Finkbeiner & Davis 1998) it would suggest that either the star is located in the very front of the LMC (contrary to Guinan et al. claim that HV2274 is in the disk) or that there is a low extinction window in this line-of-sight. On the other hand HV2274 is located only $`19^{}`$ south from the edge of the reddening map of Harris, Zaritsky & Thompson (1997) which suggests that in the region closest to HV2274 the reddening is much higher: $`E(BV)0.15`$ mag.

Because underestimated reddening leads to overestimated distance and the Guinan et al. (1998) blue and UV observations are particularly sensitive to reddening errors, we undertook a sub-project of the OGLE microlensing search aiming at precise determination of the reddening to HV2274. This paper presents the results leading to conclusion that HV2274 is most likely located at the short LMC distance.

## 2 Observations

UBVI photometry of HV2274 was carried out as a sub-project of the second phase of the OGLE microlensing survey with the 1.3-m Warsaw telescope at the Las Campanas Observatory which is operated by the Carnegie Institution of Washington. Single chip ”first generation” CCD camera with $`2048\times 2049`$ pixel SITe thin detector in ”still frame” mode was used. More details about the instrumental setup can be found in Udalski, Kubiak & Szymański (1997).

HV2274 was observed on 11 photometric nights from Sep. 9, 1998 through Sep. 25, 1998. On 7 nights only BVI photometry was obtained while on the following 4 nights full UBVI set was collected. On each night more than 20 standard stars from different Landolt (1992) fields were also observed.

All frames were de-biased and flat-fielded with the standard OGLE data pipeline. To achieve maximum precision we decided to make the aperture photometry of HV2274. The star is well separated from the faint field stars at the typical seeing of observations of 1.3 arcsec, and therefore possible contamination of the aperture photometry is marginal for this star. To derive VI photometry of the field stars we applied identical procedure as described in Udalski (1998b). Calibrated VI photometry of the field stars was compared with photometry of LMC$`\mathrm{\_}`$SC14N field (Udalski et al. 1998) which overlaps by about 70 pixels with HV2274 field. The mean differences of V and I-band magnitudes were found to be about 0.01 mag ensuring that our calibration procedures were performed correctly.

Transformation to the standard system was based on observations of a few fields from Landolt (1992). The systematic error of the V-band transformation for individual night should be smaller than 0.02 mag, while for $`BV`$ and $`VI`$ colors – smaller than 0.015 mag. For $`UB`$ color the systematic error might be larger and we conservatively assume it to be equal to 0.04 mag. This is caused by somewhat different spectral response of the OGLE instrumental ultraviolet filter because of somewhat steeper cut of the short wavelength ($`\lambda <3500`$Å) side of the U-band by the telescope field corrector made from BK7 Schott glass. Nevertheless, the standard stars transform well to the standard system. The color transformation coefficient for $`UB`$ is equal to 1.17 (1.00 means the standard system) which compares to 0.96 and 0.98 for $`BV`$ and $`VI`$, respectively. Typical $`OC`$ differences for standard stars are below 0.05 mag in $`UB`$ in the range $`1.2<UB<0.5`$.

Table 1 lists observations of HV2274 collected during this program.

## 3 Reddening to HV2274

The interstellar reddening to HV2274 can directly be derived from UBVI photometry of the star. The mean observed colors of HV2274 are as follows: $`(BV)=0.129\pm 0.007`$, $`(VI)=0.125\pm 0.011`$ and $`(UB)=0.905\pm 0.013`$ where errors are the standard deviations of all measurements. Because the transformation coefficient of our $`UB`$ color is worse than $`BV`$ and $`VI`$ colors we assume conservatively larger possible error of $`\pm 0.04`$ for $`UB`$ color.

The reddening can be determined from $`(UB)(BV)`$ color-color diagram with the most classical method – by measuring the shift of the observed position of the star along the reddening line from intrinsic, unreddened colors of stars. Fig. 1 presents $`(UB)(BV)`$ diagram for early spectral type stars. The solid line represents position of unreddened giants and dash-dotted line position of main sequence stars. Both lines are the linear fits to the Schmidt-Kaler (1982) calibrations. Because the calibration of Schmidt-Kaler is based on Galactic objects which are in general of higher metallicity than similar stars in the LMC we calculated synthetic $`UB`$ and $`BV`$ colors for a grid of Kurucz (1992) models of atmospheres for $`\mathrm{log}g=3.5`$, temperatures $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ ranging from 21000 K to 25000 K and metallicities \[Fe/H\]: 0.0 dex (Galactic stars) and $`0.5`$ dex (LMC stars). The differences between $`UB`$ and $`BV`$ colors for two metallicities at the same temperature were found to be 0.019 mag and 0.002 mag for $`UB`$ and $`BV`$ colors, respectively. This result confirms that the Galactic calibration can safely be applied to LMC stars of early B spectral type.

The star in Fig. 1 indicates position of HV2274 and the arrow shows direction of the mean reddening line for the LMC: $`E(UB)/E(BV)=0.76`$ (Fitzpatrick 1985). Dotted line marks the shift of HV2274 due to reddening. The resulting reddening of HV2274 is equal to $`E(BV)=0.149\pm 0.015`$ mag. We assumed here luminosity class III for HV2274.

Black dots in Fig. 1 show positions of 11 OB-type stars with colors corresponding to the main sequence stars located within $`3^{}`$ from HV2274. $`E(BV)`$ reddening of these stars resulting from their observed $`UB`$ and $`BV`$ color indices is equal to 0.128, 0.147, 0.170, 0.125, 0.127, 0.129, 0.137, 0.124, 0.182, 0.121 and 0.211 mag for stars $`111`$, respectively. Thus, the mean $`E(BV)`$ reddening towards HV2274 is equal to 0.146 mag with the standard deviation of 0.028 mag. We may conclude that OB-type stars in the field around HV2274 are reddened similarly to HV2274.

We also applied to our data the ”Q-method” of reddening determination. This method was used by Harris et al. (1997) to produce their reddening map. The values of $`Q_1`$ and $`Q_2`$ parameters calculated for HV2274 according to Harris et al. (1997) prescription are equal to $`0.808`$ and $`0.829`$, respectively. The $`E(BV)`$ reddening can immediately be derived from Fig. 2 of Harris et al. (1997). It is equal to 0.158 mag from $`Q_1`$ parameter and 0.155 mag from $`Q_2`$. These values are somewhat larger than the value from color-color diagram but one has to remember that the zero reddening line of Harris et al. (1997) comes from other source. Both methods give very consistent results.

To verify if we do not make any large systematic error we performed one more, entirely independent determination of reddening towards HV2274. It was shown that the mean luminosity of the red clump stars in the I-band is constant and independent of age for population of stars 2–10 Gyr old (Udalski 1998b). It only slightly depends on metallicity (Udalski 1998a). Therefore the red clump stars can serve as a good luminosity reference for reddening determination. Indeed this method was used by Stanek (1996) to determine map of extinction of the Baade’s Window in the Galactic bulge.

The top panel of Fig. 2 presents the $`I(VI)`$ color-magnitude diagram for stars located in the area of $`150\times 150`$ arcsecs centered on HV2274. In the lower panel the luminosity function of stars from the range $`19.2<I<17.2`$ and $`0.8<VI<1.2`$ is plotted with the fitted function consisting of a Gaussian representing the red clump stars and parabola representing background stars of the red giant branch (Udalski et al. 1998). The mean brightness of the red clump stars towards HV2274 is $`I=18.207`$ mag with statistical uncertainty of 0.017 mag and the standard deviation of the Gaussian $`\sigma _{\mathrm{RC}}=0.18`$ mag. The mean luminosity of the red clump stars in the LMC is equal to $`I_0=17.88`$ mag at metallicity $`0.8`$ dex (Udalski 1998b) which after a small correction for metallicity according to Udalski (1998a) calibration corresponds to $`I_0=17.90`$ mag at the mean metallicity of the field stars in the LMC equal to $`0.6`$ dex (Bica et al. 1998). Thus the mean extinction towards HV2274 in the I-band is equal to $`A_I=0.307`$ mag which corresponds to the mean reddening in that direction of $`E(BV)=0.157`$ mag. This value is in very good agreement with our previous determination based on OB-type stars.

The agreement between the mean reddening towards HV2274 and the value from individual determination to HV2274 is excellent and reassures that our reddening determination was correct. Guinan et al. (1998) conclude from similar radial velocities of the ISM lines and systemic velocity of HV2274 that the star must be located in the LMC disk. Consistent reddening of HV2274 and bulk of disk stars confirms that this is indeed the case.

## 4 Discussion

The value of interstellar reddening to HV2274, $`E(BV)=0.149\pm 0.015`$ mag, determined in previous Section confirms our guess expressed in the Introduction that Guinan et al. (1998) underestimated the reddening while determining the distance to the LMC. Their value of $`E(BV)=0.083\pm 0.006`$ mag is only half of that derived from our UBVI photometry. This is not surprising because the reddening was derived as one of many free parameters of model spectrum fitted to HST data for HV2274. Any degeneracy between free parameters contributes to very large uncertainties in final results.

Larger reddening than obtained by Guinan et al. (1998) has very important consequences for their results because their spectra cover blue and UV regions where extinction is a sensitive function of reddening. Unfortunately we do not have the HST spectrum of HV2274 at our disposal and therefore we were unable to repeat the Guinan et al. (1998) procedure with correct value of reddening. Nevertheless some conclusions are evident.

Most importantly, the HST spectrum presented in Fig. 2 by Guinan et al. (1998) must have been dereddened incorrectly. In the reddest part of their spectrum ($`\lambda 4800`$Å) where extinction is the smallest ($`A_{4800}3.8E(BV)`$), the observed dereddened flux at the Earth was underestimated by as much as 0.25 mag.

This excess of flux can only be removed in two ways. First, if the effective temperature of both components of HV2274 was determined incorrectly then the larger $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ would make both components brighter. Effective temperature would have to be higher by about 3000 K to account for the excess as indicated by Kurucz atmosphere models.

On the other hand such large error in effective temperatures determined by Guinan et al. (1998) does not seem to be likely. In the inset in their Fig. 2 they present enlarged part of the spectrum around the Balmer jump and Balmer lines with very good fit of the model spectrum. The depth of the hydrogen lines and the Balmer jump relative to the continuum is a sensitive function of gravity and effective temperature. Thus with the gravity well constrained from the system parameters, $`\mathrm{log}g3.5`$, good fit of the Balmer jump and depth of the Balmer lines indicates good temperature determination. The effect of larger extinction is not important here as the line and surrounding continuum are affected in similar way. For instance, Kurucz models indicate that increase of temperature from 23000 K to 26000 K produces shallower Balmer lines and Balmer jump by about 20%. Therefore a good fit of the model to the observed spectrum by Guinan et al. (1998) suggests that uncertainty of the effective temperature should not exceed $`1000`$ K. It should be also noted that the constant colors at different orbital phases, confirm Guinan et al. (1998) result that temperatures of both components of the system are almost identical.

The second possibility of removing excess of flux is obvious. Smaller distance to HV2274 would make it brighter. If we assume that the system parameters of HV2274 were determined correctly then the distance modulus of the star derived by Guinan et al. (1998), $`mM=18.47`$ mag, must be smaller by 0.25 mag, that is $`mM=18.22`$ mag.

At shorter wavelengths – in the UV part of the spectrum – the excess of flux must be higher than at $`4800`$Å. We suppose that this should not pose any problem in fitting the HST spectrum of HV2274 with the model. The UV extinction curve: its slopes, strength of UV bump etc, were left by Guinan et al. (1998) as other free parameters when fitting the spectrum. Thus less steep UV extinction curve can likely incorporate the excess of flux in UV producing a fit not worse than presented by Guinan et al. (1998).

Summarizing, the reddening to HV2274 was significantly underestimated by Guinan et al. (1998) because of very likely degeneracy of UV extinction curve and $`E(BV)`$ reddening. The effective temperature of both components of the system seems, however, to be determined correctly. Therefore the most likely consequence of the underestimated reddening is smaller distance modulus to HV2274 equal to $`mM=18.22\pm 0.06`$ mag with the error resulting from reddening uncertainty. It is difficult to estimate the error of the distance resulting from uncertainties of stellar parameters and effective temperatures but we believe that it should not exceed 0.1 mag.

The distance modulus of HV2274, $`mM=18.22\pm 0.13`$ mag, the star located in the disk of the LMC, can be then assumed as the distance to the LMC. We do not apply here any geometric correction to HV2274 distance modulus as Guinan et al. (1998) did because this does not seem to be confirmed by observations of the red clump and RR Lyr stars located in fields on opposite sides of the LMC bar (Udalski et al. 1998, Udalski 1998a).

It is worth noting here, that all recent determinations of the distance to the LMC with reliably calibrated methods and based on massive photometry from microlensing surveys support the short distance scale to the LMC. The distance to the LMC obtained from the mean I-band brightness of the red clump stars corrected for population effects is equal to $`mM=18.18\pm 0.06`$ mag (Udalski 1998b).

Another determination of the distance to the LMC was based on the mean luminosity of the field RR Lyr stars in the LMC (Udalski 1998a). The mean V-band brightness of the RR Lyr stars was found to be $`V_0=18.86`$ mag for 110 RR Lyr stars located in fields on opposite sides of the LMC bar. When this figure was derived precise $`E(BV)`$ reddening was not known for these fields and extrapolated values were used. The reddening was, however, slightly overestimated – on average by 0.023 mag, as indicated by determination with the red clump stars in similar way as in Section 3. Thus the mean V-band brightness of the LMC field RR Lyr stars is rather $`V_0=18.93`$ mag. With the most reliable calibration of the RR Lyr absolute luminosity based on statistical parallaxes of about 150 stars (Gould & Popowski 1998) the RR Lyr distance modulus to the LMC is $`mM=18.16\pm 0.16`$ mag. All three independent methods: eclipsing binary HV2274, red clump stars and RR Lyr stars, give the short distance to the LMC with very impressive agreement.

In the title of the first paper on determination of the LMC distance with the red clump method (Udalski et al. 1998) we asked the question: ”Are the Magellanic Clouds 15% closer than generally accepted?”. The answer seems to be more and more likely: Yes, with all astrophysical consequences: smaller distance to extragalactic objects, larger Hubble constant, fainter RR Lyr stars and therefore older globular clusters.

Acknowledgements. We would like to thank Prof. Bohdan Paczyński for many discussions. We thank Drs. K.Z. Stanek and D. Sasselov for comments and remarks on the paper. The paper was partly supported by the Polish KBN grant 2P03D00814 to A. Udalski. Partial support for the OGLE project was provided with the NSF grant AST-9530478 to B. Paczyński.

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Figure Captions

Fig. 1. Location of HV2274 in $`(UB)(BV)`$ color-color diagram (star). Solid and dash-dotted lines represent position of unreddened giants and main sequence stars, respectively. Arrow marks direction of reddening. Black dots indicate positions of 11 OB-type stars from the HV2274 field.

Fig. 2. Top panel: $`I(VI)`$ color magnitude diagram of stars in the field around HV2274. Star indicates position of HV2274. Bottom panel: Luminosity function of the red clump stars with fitted Gaussian superimposed with parabola function. Bins are 0.07 mag wide.