The ANTARES neutrino telescope: a status report

The ANTARES neutrino telescope is under construction at a depth of 2500 m in the Mediterranean sea, about 40 km off the cost of Toulon, France. It aims at the detection of very high energy neutrinos of cosmic origin, that are thought to be produced in highly energetic astrophysical processes The full detector, which is planned to be completed by the end of 2007, will include 900 photomultiplier tubes, arranged in triplets on 12 vertical strings. Each photomultiplier looks downwards, at an angle of 45 degrees to the vertical. In 2006 a major step in the construction was achieved - the ANTARES collaboration deployed the first 3 lines of the detector. An additional instrumented line, including also a few optical modules, had already been deployed in 2005. Lines 1 and 2, plus the instrumented line, have been connected and are read out through a deep-sea junction box, in turn connected to the sea-shore laboratory through a 40 km long electro-optical cable. Two additional lines are being installed and connected in January 2007. A status report of the ANTARES project and preliminary results obtained from the operation of the first lines will be presented in the talk.