A new Large Magellanic Cloud K-band distance from precision measurements of nearby red clump stars

Abstract

High-precision new JHK observations of 226 of the brightest and nearest red clump stars in the solar neighbourhood are used to determine distance moduli for the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). The resulting K- and H-band values of 18.47 ± 0.02 and 18.49 ± 0.06 imply that any correction to the K-band Cepheid PL relation due to metallicity differences between Cepheids in the LMC and the solar neighbourhood must be quite small. © 2011 The Authors Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society © 2011 RAS.