We present an XMM-Newton mosaic observation of the hot (kT∼6.5 keV) and nearby (z=0.0881) relaxed cluster of galaxies A478. We derive precise gas density, gas temperature, gas mass and total mass profiles up to 12 arcmin (about half of the virial radius R200). The gas density profile is highly peaked towards the center and the surface brightness profile is well fitted by a sum of three β-models. The derived gas density profile is in excellent agreement, both in shape and in normalization, with the published Chandra density profile (measured within 5 arcmin of the center). Projection and PSF effects on the temperature profile determination are thoroughly investigated. The derived radial temperature structure is as expected for a cluster hosting a cooling core, with a strong negative gradient at the cluster center. The temperature rises from ∼2 keV up to a plateau of ∼6.5 keV beyond 2 arcmin (i.e. r>208 kpc=0.1 R200, R200=2.08 Mpc being the virial radius). From the temperature profile and the density profile and on the hypothesis of hydrostatic equilibrium, we derived the total mass profile of A478 down to 0.01 and up to 0.5 times the virial radius. We tested different dark matter models against the observed mass profile. The Navarro et al. (cite{navarro97}) model is significantly preferred to other models. It leads to a total mass of M200=1.1× 1015 M☉ for a concentration parameter of c=4.2±0.4. The gas mass fraction increases slightly with radius. The gas mass fraction at a density contrast of δ=2500 is fgas=0.13±0.02, consistent with previous results on similar hot and massive clusters. We confirm the excess of absorption in the direction of A478. The derived absorbing column density exceeds the 21 cm measurement by a factor of ∼2, this excess extending well beyond the cool core region. Through the study of this absorbing component and a cross correlation with infrared data, we argue that the absorption excess is of Galactic origin, rather than intrinsic to the cluster.
