TITLE: GCN CIRCULAR NUMBER: 5966 SUBJECT: GRB 061222A: Swift-XRT refined analysis DATE: 06/12/22 07:11:40 GMT FROM: Dirk Grupe at PSU/Swift-XRT D. Grupe (PSU) reports on behalf of the Swift/XRT team We have analyzed the first orbit of GRB 061222A (Grupe et al., GCN 5954) with total observing times of 117s in Windowed Timing mode and 1476s in Photon Counting mode in the Swift XRT. The Photon Counting mode image provides a refined XRT position at RA, Dec= 358.263708, +46.53297, which is RA(J2000) = 23h 53m 03.29s Dec(J2000) = +46d 31' 58.7" with an error of 3.5" (90% confidence). This position is 2.4" away from the preliminary XRT position reported in GCN 5954. The X-ray light curve displays the end of a flare as seen in the BAT (at the beginning of the XRT observation this flare had an initial count rate of about 100 counts/s) and decays with a slope of 0.26+/-0.03. Spectral fits to the Windowed Timing mode data show an absorption column density significantly in excess of the Galactic value (1.01e21 cm**-2) with an excess absorption column density of (3.7+/-0.3)e21 cm**-2 and a energy spectral slope beta-x=1.34+/-0.08. Following the relation given in Grupe et al. 2006 (AJ submitted, astro-ph/0612104) the high excess absorption column density suggests that this burst is at a redshift z<3.0. Even though the observations were shortly interrupted by a new burst, GRB 06122B (Racusin et al., GCN 5957), we continue observing GRB 061222A with Swift throughout the next hours. More analysis of the data will be presented in the GCN report. This circular is an official product of the Swift XRT team.