All Tables

Table 1: Target list.
Table 2: Observations of Sculptor group targets. Additional data are the radial velocity from Côté et al. (1997), and the radial velocity from the NASA extragalactic database. No emission was detected in the H $\alpha$ pre-imaging for ESO 294-G010.
Table 3: Observations of M 81 group targets. The group membership has been established in K85, except for the candidate 5 which comes from Froebrich & Meusinger (2000). Additional data are the radial velocity from the NASA extragalactic database. Exposure times for the Kast spectrograph observations are flagged with a code indicating the instrument setup: B = blue arm with grism 830/3460; R = red arm with grating 300/4230; BR = both arms with dichroic D46; F = red arm without dichroic; HR = red arm with grating 1200/5000 centered around H $\alpha$ . A ``n.e.'' in the INGRID observation means that no emission was detected and so, no NIR imaging had been performed.
Table 4: Reddening-corrected fluxes for all H II regions in the Sculptor group dwarfs.
Table 5: Reddening-corrected fluxes for all H II regions in M 81 group galaxies.
Table 6: Physical parameters and abundances for H II regions in the dIrrs of the Sculptor and M 81 groups, for which the electron temperature could be determined. The ${\rm O}^{++}/{\rm H}^{+}$ and ${\rm S}^{+}/{\rm H}^{+}$ abundances are the average of the two values obtained from the two lines of the doublet separately ( $\lambda \lambda 5007,4959$ , and $\lambda \lambda 6716,6731$ , respectively).
Table 7: Data for the L-Z relation of Sculptor and M 81 dIrrs, taken both from the literature and from the present work. The abundances, computed with the method identified in the third column, have been extracted from the publication identified by its acronym in the fourth column (see the bibliography); S08 is this paper. The abundance methods are D = direct, M = McGaugh, P = Pilyugin, and I = indirect. Notes on abundances are: (a) average of 3 regions; (b) average of two methods; (c) central region; (d) external region. Distances have been computed with the method identified in the sixth column, and have been extracted from the publication identified by its acronym in the seventh column (see the bibliography). The distance methods are J98, assuming an error of $20\%$ and RGBT - red giant branch tip. Total apparent H-band magnitudes are from this work, and the H-band extinctions are from Schlegel et al. (1998).
Table 8: Abundances and NIR luminosities for the fiducial sample of galaxies. Distances are expressed in Mpc, and Cols. 6 and 7 indicate the method used to compute the distance, and its reference. Our abundances have been corrected by -0.1 dex. For comparison we add also I Zw 18 (H=16.03 $\pm$ 0.15; Thuan 1983) and SBS 0335-052 (H=16.09 $\pm$ 0.03, $15\hbox {$^{\prime \prime }$ }$ aperture; Vanzi et al. 2000).
Table 9: A compilation of luminosities and abundances for a sample of nearby dwarf star-forming galaxies. The abundances listed in Col. 6 have been taken from the publication the number of which is given in Col. 8 and have been computed with the method identified in Col. 7: 1 = direct method but temperature not computed, assumed $T_{{\rm e}}=10~000~{\rm K}$ ; 2 = direct method; 3 = unknown. The publication numbers correspond to the following papers: (1) Hunter & Hoffman 1999; (2) Hidalgo-Gàmez & Olofsson (2002); (3) Vigroux et al. (1987); (4) Storchi-Bergmann et al. (1994); (5) Martin (1997); (6) Kobulnicky & Skillman (1998); (7) average $\pm 1\sigma$ of abundances from the following papers: Izotov & Thuan (2004), Hunter & Hoffman (1999), Thuan & Izotov (2005a,b), Alloin et al. (1979), Shi et al. (2005); (8) Izotov & Thuan (1998); (9) Shi et al. (2005); (10) Thuan & Izotov (2005a,b); (11) van Zee et al. (1997); (12) Izotov & Thuan (1998); (13) Izotov & Thuan (1997). Most distances were taken from Hunter & Elmegreen (2006; HE06): in Col. 10 the label ``h'' means that these authors computed the distance from the recession velocity, while a number identifies their source publication for the distance. If no distance is given in HE06, then we derived it using the NED velocity and $H_{\circ}=72~{\rm km}~{\rm s}^{-1}~{\rm Mpc}^{-1}$ . Finally the DDO 43 distance is from Sharina (2004, private communication; cited in Karachentsev et al. 2004).
Table B.1: Dispersions and wavelength range for each date and Kast configuration.