  The Very High Energy Gamma Ray Astronomy (VHE) is a rapidly evolving branch
of modern astronomy, which covers the range from about 50 GeV to several tens
of TeV from the ground. In the past years, the second generation instruments
firmly established a growing and varied list of sources including plerions,
supernova remnants and active galactic nuclei, and started to study some
fundamental questions such as the origin of cosmic rays or the emission
mechanisms of the active galactic nuclei.
  New results now include the first VHE unidentified sources as well as more
puzzling sources such as the Galactic center. The arrival of new generation
instruments (HESS, CANGAROO III, VERITAS, MAGIC) already gives a impressive
look at the near future. Here we attempt to summarize the current status of the
field. We briefly describe the instruments and analysis techniques, and give an
outlook on the sources detected sofar.
