The nature of the hard X-ray power-law tail in M 87

Spatially-resolved spectroscopy of the elliptical galaxy M 87 with the MECS instrument on board BeppoSAX demonstrates that the hard X-ray power-law ta il, originally discovered by ASCA (Matsumoto et al. 1996; Alien 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 contri bution cannot be ruled out. An origin from a Seyfert-like nucleus is disfav ored 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 ex hibits a strong positive radial temperature gradient, along with a radial d ecrease of the iron abundance.