Distances to the Globular Clusters 47 Tucanae and NGC 362 Using Gaia DR2 Parallaxes

Using parallaxes from Gaia Data Release 2 (Gaia DR2), we estimate the distance to the globular clusters 47 Tuc and NGC 362, taking advantage of the background stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud and quasars to account for various parallax systematics. We found the parallax to be dependent on the Gaia DR2 G-band apparent magnitude for stars with 13 < G < 18, where brighter stars have a lower parallax zero point than fainter stars. The distance to 47 Tuc was found to be 4.45 ± 0.01 ± 0.12 kpc, and for NGC 362 8.54 ± 0.20 ± 0.44 kpc, with random and systematic errors listed, respectively. This is the first time a precise distance measurement directly using parallaxes has been determined for either of these two globular clusters.