We present the preliminary results of a deep (167 ks) ROSAT HRI observation
of the cD galaxy NGC1399 in the Fornax cluster. We find, in agreement with
previous observations, an extended (41 Kpc adopting a distance of 19 Mpc)
gaseous halo with a luminosity of L_X=(4.41\pm 0.04)x10^{41} erg/s. The 5
arcsec resolution of the data allows us to detect a very complex and asymmetric
structure of the halo with respect to the optical galaxy. Moreover the analysis
of the radial structure reveals the presence of a multi-component profile not
consistent with a simple King model over the whole 40 Kpc. We do not detect the
presence of a central source and pose an upper limit to the luminosity of a
possible active nucleus. Due to the length of the observation, comparable to
that of a deep survey, we detect a large number of sources within the HRI FOV,
in slight excess with respect to the estimates based on previous surveys. We
study the flux distribution of the sources, their temporal behaviour and their
spatial distribution with respect to the central galaxy.Comment: 15 pages, 10 figures (6 in color), 1 table; uses subfigure.sty,
supertabular.sty, lscape.sty, color.sty; To be published in the proceeding of
"X-ray Astronomy 2000" (Mondello (Palermo), September 2000
