Neutrino astronomy with IceCube and AMANDA

Since the early 1990s, the South Pole has been the site of the construction of the worldʼs first under-ice Cherenkov neutrino telescopes – AMANDA and IceCube. The AMANDA detector was completed in 2000, and its successor IceCube, a kilometre scale neutrino detector, began construction in 2005. Completion of IceCube is scheduled for 2011. This paper will give an overview of the history, construction, latest physics results and potential of these detectors.