1 Introduction

In his classical paper Sandage (1986) studied the perturbation of the very nearby velocity field using the available distances to local galaxies, mostly obtained by ground-based observations of brightest resolved stars and Cepheids. He concluded that the deviation from the linear Hubble flow possibly was detected at very small distances, while the quiet, linear Hubble law starts at about 2 Mpc. He pointed out the remarkable properties of the local velocity field: 1) The linearity of the velocity-distance relation down to small distances, 2) the closeness of the local and global rates of expansion, and 3) the small velocity dispersion around the Hubble law. He also asked what happens when the distances become more accurate, in particular, will the velocity dispersion still decrease below $\sigma_{\rm v} = 60$ kms^-1 which he derived from those data. We also note that Karachentsev & Makarov (1996) found that by using both massive and small galaxies the velocity dispersion in the local volume is $\sigma_{\rm v} = 72$ kms^-1.

The aim of our Letter is to use new accurate data on the distances of nearby galaxies inferred for the extragalactic Cepheid PL-relation (cf. Sect. 2) in order to study further the behaviour of the Hubble law in the outskirts of the Local Group.