Fundamental Properties and Distances of Large Magellanic Cloud Eclipsing Binaries. III. EROS 1044^*

We present results from a detailed analysis of a third eclipsing binary (EB) system in the Large Magellanic Cloud, EROS 1044 (~B2 IV-V + ~B2 III-IV). Our study combines the "classical" EB study of light and radial velocity curves with detailed modeling of the observed spectral energy distribution and yields an essentially complete picture of the stellar properties of the system and a determination of its distance. The observational data exploited include optical photometry, space-based UV spectroscopy, and UV/optical spectrophotometry. The advantages of our technique include numerous consistency checks and, in the case of the distance determinations, the absence of zero-point uncertainties and adjustable parameters. We find the EROS 1044 system to consist of a pair of normal, mildly evolved ~21,000 K stars, whose derived properties are consistent with stellar evolution calculations. The distance to the system is 47.5 ± 1.8 kpc. We discuss the implications of our results for three EB systems (HV 2274, HV 982, and EROS 1044) on the general distance to the Large Magellanic Cloud.