to the SE of M87. Intergalactic red giant stars were apparently discovered near M87 by Ferguson (1998). It is therefore relevant to search for, and to try and explain, any extended feature one may detect in the direction of the center of the cluster. In this context, we mention the study of Haikala (1995) who examined the UV emission detected in the direction of a dust globule close to the North Galactic Pole, slightly north of the Virgo cluster (VC).

Any material that could produce extinction needs to be accounted for. To the best of our knowledge, nobody attempted to study the obscuration and FIR emission by ISM or IGM in the direction of a rich, nearby cluster of galaxies. This is particularly important for the VC, which serves as one of the key stones in the distance ladder leading up to the determination of the Hubble constant (van den Bergh 1996). The HST Key Project on the Extragalactic Distance Scale, where the required accuracy of the determination of H$_0$ is 10%, could be affected significantly by unaccounted extinction. Until now, seven galaxies within 10$^{\circ}$ of the Virgo center have been observed for Cepheids in this context (Macri 1999).

The 