I am a meteorologist, amateur astronomer and IDL software developer from Hannover, Germany.

For a long time I have been interested in basically everything that can be seen in the sky. The weather, as well as astronomical objects. This is also thanks to my father who showed me deep sky objects with his small refractor when I was a kid. I also very well remember watching comet Halley in spring 1986, visible as a fuzzy blob. But, I was impressed! This interest has continued and extended over the years. Now my main interests are in exoplanets and lunar and astrophotography.

During my education at uni and later working as a scientist, I have learned and learnt to love IDL programming. I am always amazed what you can do with it! One example is AviStack which is now in public use by amateur astronomers around the world. These activities will continue in the future, and I hope that people can benefit from this work.

In June 2011 I recorded the first ever image of the fourth-order rainbow in nature. You can read about this discovery here.

Michael Theusner