De Vaucouleurs Atlas Type: SA:(r)ab sp

Filter: B

Telescope: OHP 1.2-m
North up , East left
Field Dimensions: 7.3 x 5.5 arcminutes

RC3 Type: SA(s)b: sp
RSA Type: Sab
Surface Brightness Range Displayed: 19.5-26.0 mag per square arcsec
Absolute Blue Magnitude: -20.3

De Vaucouleurs Atlas Description:

NGC 4388 is highly inclined, and suffers sufficient near-side extinction to make determination of family and variety difficult even though the galaxy is not exactly edge-on. At first sight, the bright inner area looks like a dusty bar, perhaps like those seen in NGC 7552 or NGC 7582 . However, 2MASS images (Jarrett et al. 2003) indicate that the dust in NGC 4388 actually obscures a large and well-defined inner ring , with no obvious bar inside the ring. If a bar is present, it is highly foreshortened and hard to see even in the near-IR. The core is small and is known to include a Seyfert 2 nucleus (e.g., Pogge 1989). NGC 4388 is the first Seyfert discovered in the Virgo Cluster (Phillips and Malin 1982).