We have imaged an empty area of 34 \times 34 arcmin ^ { 2 } one and a half degree north of the Virgo cluster core to survey for intracluster planetary nebula candidates .
We have implemented and tested a fully automatic procedure for the selection of emission line objects in wide-field images , based on the on-off technique from Ciardullo and Jacoby .
Freeman et al .
have spectroscopically confirmed a sample of intracluster planetary nebulae in one Virgo field .
We use the photometric and morphological properties of this sample to test our selection procedure .
In our newly surveyed Virgo field , 75 objects were identified as best candidates for intracluster PNe .

The luminosity function of the spectroscopically confirmed PNe shows a brighter cut-off than the planetary nebula luminosity function for the inner regions of M87 .
Such a brighter cut-off is also observed in the newly surveyed field and indicates a smaller distance modulus , implying that the front end of the Virgo cluster is closer to us by a significant amount : 14 % closer ( 2.1 Mpc ) than M87 for the spectroscopic field , using the PN luminosity function distance of 14.9 Mpc to M87 , and 19 % closer ( 2.8 Mpc ) than M87 for the newly surveyed field .
Independent distance indicators ( Tully-Fisher relation for Virgo spirals and surface brightness fluctuations for Virgo ellipticals ) agree with these findings .

From these two Virgo cluster fields there is no evidence that the surface luminosity density for the diffuse stellar component in the cluster decreases with radius .
The luminosity surface density of the diffuse stellar population is comparable to that of the galaxies .