The Distance to the Large Magellanic Cloud

I demonstrate that the two unexpected results in the local Universe: anomalous intrinsic (V-I)0 colors of RR Lyrae stars and clump giants in the Galactic center, and very short distances to Magellanic Clouds inferred from clump giants, can be at least partially resolved with a modified coefficient of selective extinction A_V/E(V-I). With this modification, I find a new clump-giant distance modulus to the Large Magellanic Cloud, mu{LMC} = 18.27 +/- 0.07, which is 0.09 larger than the Udalski (1998b) result. When distance estimates from the red clump, RR Lyrae stars and the eclipsing binary HV2274 are combined, one obtains mu_{LMC} = 18.31 +/- 0.04 (internal).