The Voyager Electron Telescope - A status report

The CRS instrument complement on Voyager 1 and 2 includes a small electron telescope covering the energy range from 6 - -160 MeV. While recent observations out to 73 AU indicate the telescope response is dominated by background events produced by higher energy galactic cosmic ray ions, these data do provide upper limits on the electron intensity that are several orders of magnitude below the expected local interstellar levels. Since the background rate is expected to increase by less than a factor of - 3, the response of the electron telescope should be a sensitive indicator as the Voyagers approach the modulation boundary.