The Araucaria Project. Distances to Nine Galaxies Based on a Statistical
  Analysis of their Carbon Stars (JAGB Method)
  Our work presents an independent calibration of the J-region Asymptotic Giant
Branch (JAGB) method using Infrared Survey Facility (IRSF) photometric data and
a custom luminosity function profile to determine JAGB mean magnitudes for nine
galaxies. We determine a mean absolute magnitude of carbon stars of
$M_{LMC}=-6.212 \pm 0.010$ (stat.) $\pm 0.030$ (syst.) mag. We then use
near-infrared photometry of a number of nearby galaxies, originally obtained by
our group to determine their distances from Cepheids using the Leavitt law, in
order to independently determine their distances with the JAGB method. We
compare the JAGB distances obtained in this work with the Cepheid distances
resulting from the same photometry and find very good agreement between the
results from the two methods. The mean difference is 0.01 mag with an rms
scatter of 0.06 mag after taking into account seven out of the eight analyzed
galaxies that had their distances determined using Cepheids. The very accurate
distance to the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) based on detached eclipsing
binaries (Graczyk et al. 2020) is also in very good agreement with the distance
obtained from carbon stars.
