The Araucaria Project: The distance to the Small Magellanic Cloud from
  near infrared photometry of Type~II Cepheids
  We have obtained deep near infrared J- and K-band observations of 14 BL
Herculis and 5 W Virginis SMC stars from the OGLE III survey with the ESO New
Technology Telescope equipped with the SOFI infrared camera. From these
observations, period-luminosity (P-L) relations in the J and Ks 2MASS bands
were derived. The slopes of the K and J band relations of -2.15 +- 0.19 and
-1.95 +- 0.24, respectively, agree very well with the corresponding slopes
derived previously for population II Cepheids in globular clusters, Galactic
bulge and in the Large Magellanic Cloud. The distance modulus to the SMC
obtained from our data using P-L relation derived for globular cluster Cepheids
equals 18.85 +- 0.07 (statistical) +- 0.07 (systematic without including
potential metallicity effect), which within the uncertainties agrees well with
the results obtained with other methods.
