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J. Kennea (UC Santa Barbara), H. Boehringer (MPE, Germany), E. Belsole (CEA Saclay, France), K. Matsushita (MPE, Germany), S. Molendi (Istituto di Fisica Cosmica, Italy), D. Worrall (University of Bristol, UK), R. Mushotzky (LHEA, NASA/GSFC), M. Ehle (ESA, Spain), I. Sakelliou (MSSL, UK), G. Stewart (Leicester University, UK), T. Vestrand (LANL)
We report on observations of the giant ellipitical galaxy M87 in the Virgo Cluster during the XMM-Newton performance verification phase, with EPIC-MOS, EPIC-pn and Optical Monitor instruments. With the energy sensitive imaging instruments MOS and pn we obtain the first spatially constrained X-ray spectra of the nucleus of M87, and find it to be well fit by a power law with a slope of ~.2, with no significant thermal emission contributing to the spectrum. A component of the M87 jet is also detected and well fit by a power law with slope ~.4. The good photon statistics of MOS and pn allow a detailed analysis of the radial temperature and abundance distributions of 6 elements. The temperature structure found are in good agreement with previous observations with ASCA and BeppoSAX. There is no indication of a multi-temperature structure for radii \ge2'. An apparent sharp metal abundance drop at radius smaller than 1' is probably due to resonant line scattering.