  Previous studies of the Fe abundances in the hot gas of galaxies and groups
have reported conflicting results with most studies finding very sub-solar Fe
abundances that disagree with standard theory. To investigate the possible role
of Fe abundance gradients on these measurements we present deprojection
analysis of the ROSAT PSPC data of 10 of the brightest cooling flow galaxies
and groups. The PSPC allows for spatially resolved spectral analysis on a
half-arcminute scale, and interesting constraints on both the temperatures and
Fe abundances are possible because the ~1 keV temperatures of these systems are
well matched to the bandpass of the PSPC. In 9 out of 10 systems we find clear
evidence that the Fe abundance decreases with increasing radius: Z_Fe ~1 solar
- (several) solar within the central radial bin (r < ~10 kpc) which decreases
to Z_Fe ~0.5 solar at the largest radii examined (r ~50-100 kpc). The Fe
abundances (and temperatures) are consistent with the average values for these
systems that we obtained in our previous analyses of the ASCA data using
multitemperature models which confirms that previous inferences of very
sub-solar Fe abundances from ASCA arise from the incorrect assumption of
isothermal gas and not the presence of Fe abundance gradients. We discuss why
this ``Fe Bias'' affects much more seriously the measurements of Z_Fe from ASCA
data than from ROSAT data. We show that the Fe abundance profiles for these
galaxies and groups are consistent with a gas-dynamical model where the gas is
enriched by stellar ejecta and supernovae in the ``solar supernova
proportion'', the stars formed with a Galactic IMF, and the gas is diluted by
mixing with primordial gas at large radii.
