1999/10/14 by M. Guainazzi, Guainazzi, M., S. Molendi +1
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Astrophysics (astro-ph) #FOS: Physical sciences #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Gamma-ray bursts and supernovae #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.astro-ph/9910271
4 Latex pages, 3 figures, Accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics Letters
arxiv created 1999/10/14 · openalex publication_date 1999/10/14 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Spatially-resolved spectroscopy of the elliptical galaxy M87 with the MECS instrument on board BeppoSAX demonstrates that the hard X-ray power-law tail, originally discovered by ASCA (Matsumoto et al 1996; Allen et al. 1999), 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.