We present a distance determination to the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) based
on an analysis of four detached, long period, late type eclipsing binaries
discovered by the OGLE Survey. The components of the binaries show negligible
intrinsic variability. A consistent set of stellar parameters was derived with
low statistical and systematic uncertainty. The absolute dimensions of the
stars are calculated with a precision of better than 3%.
The surface brightness - infrared color relation was used to derive the
distance to each binary. The four systems clump around a distance modulus of (m
- M)=18.99 with a dispersion of only 0.05 mag. Combining these results with the
distance published by Graczyk et al. for the eclipsing binary OGLE SMC113.3
4007 we obtain a mean distance modulus to the SMC of 18.965 +/- 0.025 (stat.)
+/- 0.048 (syst.) mag. This corresponds to a distance of 62.1 +/- 1.9 kpc,
where the error includes both uncertainties. Taking into account other recent
published determinations of the SMC distance we calculated the distance modulus
difference between the SMC and the LMC equal to 0.458 +/- 0.068 mag. Finally we
advocate mu_{SMC}=18.95 +/- 0.07 as a new "canonical" value of the distance
modulus to this galaxy.Comment: Accepted for publication in Ap
