The Araucaria Project: deep NIR phot. I.

Until now, these data have only been used by the Araucaria Project to determine distances using the tip of the red giant branch and RR Lyrae stars. Now, we present the entire data collection in the form of a database, consisting of accurate J- and K-band magnitudes, sky coordinates, ellipticity measurements, and timestamps of observations, complemented by stars' loci in their reference images.

The depth of our photometry reaches about 22 mag at the 5{sigma} level, and is comparable to NIR surveys, such as the UKIRT Infrared Deep Sky Survey (UKIDSS) or the VISTA Hemisphere Survey (VHS). Small overlap with VHS and no overlap with UKIDSS makes our database a unique source of quality photometry.