The distance to the Small Magellanic Cloud from multiband period-luminosity relations for classical Cepheids and its dependence on metallicity

Abstract

We present a distance determination to the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) using optical and near-infrared photometry from OGLE and IRSF. Applying a multiband method to V, I, J, H and K OGLE and IRSF data, we measured the SMC true distance modulus and mean reddening. Comparing our results with accurate distances to the LMC and SMC obtained from eclipsing binary systems, we conclude that the dependence of Cepheid magnitudes on metallicity is very small (< 0.07 mag/dex) in all bands.