Astrophysical sources of gravitational waves

The interferometric detectors of gravitational waves (GW) (such as VIRGO and LIGO) will search for events in a frequency band within a few Hz and a few kHz, where several sources are expected to emit. In this talk we outline briefly the current theoretical knowledge on the emission of GW in events such as the coalescence of compact binaries, the gravitational collapse, the spinning of a neutron stars. Expected amplitudes are compared with the target sensitivity of the VIRGO/LIGO interferometric detectors.