Radial velocity for 10 giant eclipsing binaries

The targets form an elongated structure, highly inclined to the plane of the sky. The distance difference between the nearest and most-distant system amounts to 10kpc with the line-of-sight depth reaching 7kpc. We find tentative evidence of the existence of a spherical stellar substructure (core) in the SMC coinciding with its stellar center, containing about 40% of the young and intermediate age stars in the galaxy.

The radial extension of this substructure is ~1.5kpc. We derive a distance to the SMC center of DSMC=62.44{+/-}0.47(stat.){+/-}0.81(syst.)kpc corresponding to a distance modulus (m-M)SMC=18.977{+/-}0.016{+/-}0.028mag, representing an accuracy of better than 2%.