TITLE: GCN CIRCULAR NUMBER: 23296 SUBJECT: GRB 181003A: Swift-XRT observations DATE: 18/10/03 06:56:48 GMT FROM: Phil Evans at U of Leicester P.A. Evans (U. Leicester), J.P. Osborne (U. Leicester), D.N. Burrows (PSU), J.A. Kennea (PSU), M. Perri (ASDC) and G. Tagliaferri (INAF-OAB) report on behalf of the Swift-XRT team: The XRT began observing the field of GRB 181003A at 06:02:32.6 UT, 3089.4 seconds after the BAT trigger. Using promptly downlinked data we find an uncatalogued X-ray source located at RA, Dec 52.52910, -33.96445 which is equivalent to: RA(J2000) = 03h 30m 06.98s Dec(J2000) = -33d 57' 52.0" with an uncertainty of 4.5 arcseconds (radius, 90% containment). This location is 242 arcseconds from the BAT onboard position. This position may be improved as more data are received; the latest position is available at http://www.swift.ac.uk/sper. We cannot determine whether the source is fading at the present time. As this position is significantly outside the BAT error circle, it is probably unrelated to the trigger. A power-law fit to a spectrum formed from promptly downlinked event data gives a column density consistent with the Galactic value of 1.24 x 10^20 cm^-2 (Willingale et al. 2013).