Gravitational Wave Astronomy: a status report

The LIGO observatories have recently finished more than a year of observation at design sensitivity. They will be going through an upgrade that will enhance their sensitivity by a factor of two and start a new period of observation in 2009. After that work to install the major upgrades that constitute Advanced LIGO will start. A few years later the LIGO observatories will start operating with an order of magnitude enhanced sensitivity. In this talk I review the most recent results obtained during the last observation period (scientific run number 5): these results although null, are giving interesting upper limits in observational astrophysics. I will discuss the implications they have for the nascent field of Gravitational Wave Astronomy.