The Araucaria Project. The Distance to the Sculptor Group Galaxy NGC
  7793 from Near-Infrared Photometry of Cepheid Variables
  Following the earlier discovery of classical Cepheid variables in the
Sculptor Group spiral galaxy NGC 7793 from an optical wide-field imaging
survey, we have performed deep near-infrared $J$- and $K$-band follow-up
photometry of a subsample of these Cepheids to derive the distance to this
galaxy with a higher accuracy than what was possible from optical photometry
alone, by minimizing the effects of reddening and metallicity on the distance
result. Combining our new near-infrared period-luminosity relations with the
previous optical photometry we obtain a true distance modulus to NGC 7793 of
$(27.66 \pm 0.04)$ mag (statistical) $\pm 0.07$ mag (systematic), i.e. a
distance of $(3.40 \pm 0.17)$ Mpc. We also determine the mean reddening
affecting the Cepheids to be $E(B-V)=(0.08 \pm 0.02)$ mag, demonstrating that
there is significant dust extinction intrinsic to the galaxy in addition to the
small foreground extinction. A comparison of the new, improved Cepheid distance
to earlier distance determinations of NGC 7793 from the Tully-Fisher and TRGB
methods yields agreement within the reported uncertainties of these previous
measurements.
