Rosat HRI observations of the open cluster NGC 2516

We present ROSAT HRI observations of the NGC 2516, a young southern open cluster with low metallicity. We detect 73 X-ray sources already detected with the PSPC and 12 new X-ray sources. The higher HRI spatial resolution allows us to improve the position of the previous known sources, and to better determine the optical counterparts of X-ray sources with respect to the PSPC data. We find 28 sources with no catalogued counterparts, most with faint objects within their X-ray positional error circle. Multiband CCD photometry of these possible counterparts shows that about half of them are consistent with being dK and dM cluster members. Assuming that they are true NGC 2516 members, the derived X-ray luminosity is consistent with that observed in dK and dM stars in more metal-rich open clusters of similar age, suggesting that the activity level at which X-ray saturation occurs is insensitive to a change of a factor two in stellar metallicity.