1999A&A...351L..19G

Spatially-resolved spectroscopy of the elliptical galaxy M 87 with the MECS instrument on board BeppoSAX demonstrates that the hard X-ray power-law tail, originally discovered by ASCA (Matsumoto et al., 1996PASJ...48..201M; Allen et al., 1999, MNRAS, in press), originates in the innermost 2'. Our results are consistent with it being produced in an Accretion Dominated Flow, although a substantial jet contribution cannot be ruled out. An origin from a Seyfert-like nucleus is disfavored by our data. As a by-product of this result, we present an analysis of the thermal emission coming from the center of the Virgo cluster, which exhibits a strong positive radial temperature gradient, along with a radial decrease of the iron abundance.