A [CSC][ITAL]BeppoSAX[/ITAL][/CSC] Observation of the Merging Cluster Abell 3266

We present results from a BeppoSAX observation of the rich cluster Abell 3266. The broadband spectrum (2-50 keV) of the cluster, when fitted with an optically thin thermal emission model, yields a temperature of 8.1+/-0.2 keV and a metal abundance of 0.17+/-0.02 in solar units, with no evidence of a hard X-ray excess in the Phoswich Detector System spectrum. By performing a spatially resolved spectral analysis, we find that the projected temperature drops with increasing radius, going from approximately 10 keV at the cluster core to approximately 5 keV at about 1.5 Mpc. Our BeppoSAX temperature profile is in good agreement with the ASCA temperature profile of Markevitch et al. From our two-dimensional temperature map, we find that the gradient is observed in all azimuthal directions. The temperature gradient may have been caused by a recent merger event that was also responsible for a velocity-dispersion gradient measured in the optical band. The projected metal abundance profile and the two-dimensional map are both consistent with being constant.