Using Surface Brightness Fluctuations to Study Nearby Satellite Galaxy
  Systems: Calibration and Methodology
  We explore the use of ground-based surface brightness fluctuation (SBF)
measurements to constrain distances to nearby dwarf galaxies. Using archival
CFHT Megacam imaging data for a sample of 27 nearby dwarfs, we demonstrate that
reliable SBF measurements and distances accurate to 15\% are possible even for
very low surface brightness (LSB, $\mu_{i0}>24$ mag/arcsec$^2$) galaxies with
modest, $\sim$hour-long exposures with CFHT. Combining our sample with a recent
sample of 7 dwarfs with SBF measured with HST from the literature, we provide
the most robust empirical SBF calibration to-date for the blue colors expected
for these low mass systems. Our calibration is credible over the color range
$0.3\lesssim g-i\lesssim0.8$ mag. It is also the first SBF calibration tied
completely to TRGB distances as each galaxy in the sample has a literature TRGB
distance. We find that even though the intrinsic scatter in SBF increases for
blue galaxies, the rms scatter in the calibration is still $\lesssim0.3$ mag.
We verify our measurements by comparing with HST SBF measurements and detailed
image simulations. We argue that ground-based SBF is a very useful tool for
characterizing dwarf satellite systems and field dwarfs in the nearby,
D$\lesssim$20 Mpc universe.
