The Araucaria Project: Distance to the Local Group Galaxy NGC 3109 from Near-Infrared Photometry of Cepheids

We present near-infrared J- and K-band photometry of 77 Cepheid variables in the Local Group galaxy NGC 3109. Combining our data with the previously published optical V- and I-band photometry of Cepheids in this galaxy we derive an accurate distance and interstellar reddening to NGC 3109. Adopting a distance modulus of 18.5 mag for the Large Magellanic Cloud, we obtain a true distance modulus to NGC 3109 of (m-M)_0 = 25.571 +- 0.024 mag (random error), corresponding to a distance of 1.30 +- 0.02 Mpc. The systematic uncertainty on this value (apart from the adopted LMC distance) is of the order of +-3%, the main contributors to this value being the uncertainty on the photometric zero points, and the effect of blending with unresolved companion stars. The total reddening determined from our multiwavelength solution is E(B-V)=0.087 +- 0.012 mag. About half of the reddening is produced internal to NGC 3109. Our distance result is consistent with previous determinations of the distance to NGC 3109, but has significantly reduced error bars.