TITLE: GCN GRB OBSERVATION REPORT NUMBER: 4853 SUBJECT: GRB060218: analysis of the XMM-Newton observation DATE: 06/03/06 19:28:13 GMT FROM: Andrea De Luca at IASF-CNR,Milano Andrea De Luca (INAF/IASF, Milano) on behalf of a larger collaboration reports: We have analyzed the XMM-Newton observation of the field of GRB060218, discovered by Swift/BAT on 2006, February 18 at 03:34:30 UT (GCN4775, Cusumano et al.) The XMM-Newton observation started on 2006, February 20 at 17:21:45 UT (~61.8 hours after the GRB trigger) and lasted for 14 ks. The observation is affected by a high particle background, which hampers a detailed temporal and spectral analysis of the faint X-ray afterglow. We report here on data collected by the EPIC/pn camera. spanning the time range 223.9-234.9 ks after the trigger. The afterglow of GRB060218 is detected at the following coordinates: RA(J2000): 03h 21m 39.63s, Dec(J2000): 16d 52' 03.4" with an uncertainty of 1.2 arcsec (1sigma), fully consistent with the coordinates of the optical (GCN4779, Marshall et al.) and radio (GCN4828, Soderberg & Frail) afterglow, as well as with the Swift/XRT position (GCN4786, Cusumano et al.). Extracting source events from a circle of 10 arcsec radius (containing ~50% of the total counts) the pn time-averaged, background-subtracted count rate in the 0.5-8 keV range is of 0.017+/-0.002 cts/s. No significant fading of the X-ray flux is detected along the XMM-Newton observation. The time-integrated X-ray spectrum is well fit (reduced chi2=0.98, 14 d.o.f.) by a steep power law absorbed by the Galactic column (NH=1.1e21 cm^-2, Dickey & Lockman, 1990), with a photon index Gamma=3.3+/-0.6 (90% conf. level for a single parameter). The observed flux (0.5-10 keV) is of 5.7x10^-14 erg cm^-2 s^-1, corresponding to an unabsorbed flux of 8.4x10^-14 erg cm^-2 s^-1.