NEUTRINO ASTRONOMY AND COSMIC RAYS AT THE SOUTH POLE: LATEST RESULTS FROM AMANDA AND PERSPECTIVES FOR ICECUBE

The AMANDA neutrino telescope has been in operation at the South Pole since 1996. The present final array configuration, operational since 2000, consists of 677 photomultiplier tubes arranged in 19 strings, buried at depths between 1500 and 2000 m in the ice. The most recent results on a multi-year search for point sources of neutrinos will be shown. The study of events triggered in coincidence with the surface array SPASE and AMANDA provided a result on cosmic ray composition. Expected improvements from IceCube/IceTop will also be discussed.