In-flight calibration of the SWIFT XRT effective area

The Swift X-ray Telescope (XRT) is designed to make astrometric, spectroscopic and photometric observations of the X-ray emission from Gamma-ray bursts and their afterglows in the 0.2-10 keV energy band. Here we report the initial results of the analysis of Swift XRT effective area as measured both on-axis and off-axis during the in-flight calibration phase using the laboratory results and ray-tracing simulations as a starting point. Our analysis includes the study of the effective area at a range of energies, for different event grade selection and operating modes using two astronomical sources characterized by different intrinsic spectra.