David Malin: The Chemist Who Brought Color to the Cosmos

Once, deep space photography was solely in shades of gray. That changed when Australian chemist David Malin developed a revolutionary technique that introduced color into astronomical images.

Few individuals can claim to have an asteroid, a planet, or even a galaxy named after them, but David Malin, a renowned Australian astronomer and photographer, has achieved just that—by chance.

In 1976, while gathering images for a book at the newly established Anglo-Australian Observatory in Siding Spring, New South Wales, Malin began experimenting in the darkroom. "I was working with plates from the UK Schmidt Telescope," he recalls. Using a technique he had recently devised to capture more subtle light from stars, he made a fascinating discovery: "I noticed a peculiar feature sticking out of a galaxy near the Virgo cluster, but I had no idea what it was."

This anomaly appeared to resemble a jet protruding from Messier 89, a prominent elliptical galaxy in Virgo. His colleagues were taken aback, as the area had been well-explored, making this object unexpected. This led to Malin co-authoring his first paper in the peer-reviewed journal Astronomical Journal.

This experience fostered his affinity for Virgo. Years later, while re-photographing the same area at increased resolutions for a survey of faint galaxies, he identified another peculiar feature in the images, marking it with an exclamation point and sending it to his American colleagues.

His U.S. collaborators were astonished; they had never encountered such an object before. Upon examining it with a radio telescope, they discovered it was a completely new type of galaxy, much farther away than the Virgo cluster, and exceptionally large.

"They were very excited," Malin modestly states. "We ended up publishing another paper, with me as the third author, and I was thrilled when they named the galaxy 'Malin 1'."

Malin 1 is considered one of the largest spiral galaxies ever found—over three times the size of the Milky Way. This giant low surface-brightness spiral galaxy is located 1.19 billion light-years from Earth and spans about 650,000 light-years in diameter. Despite extensive searches, only three more of these faint galaxies have been discovered since.

Not bad for someone who didn't even start as an astronomer; Malin began his career in England as a chemist.

After completing his studies at a technical college in Lancashire, Malin worked as a laboratory assistant for Ciba-Geigy in Manchester. Though he had shown an early interest in photography by dismantling his grandparents' box camera at age six, it wasn't until a trip to Paris in his early twenties that his passion for photography truly ignited.

"For a kid from the grimy suburbs of northern England, Paris was an extraordinary experience," he reminisces. "I was snapping pictures everywhere."

He returned home with numerous rolls of black-and-white film but lacked the funds to develop them. His friends at Ciba-Geigy taught him how to develop the film himself. "They showed me how to mix the chemicals and use an enlarger," he recalls. "It was a magical experience."

So enchanted by the process, he was unaware when a Ciba-Geigy executive discovered him developing photos on company time. "The right thing to do would have been to fire me," Malin jokes, "but instead, he encouraged my interest in photography."

As industrial chemists sought to understand chemical behaviors at a microscopic level, Malin began conducting microscopic studies. His work proved successful, and he quickly advanced to lead a research team employing advanced microscopes and x-ray machines.

Despite his accomplishments, the company hesitated to officially promote him to head of the lab due to his lack of formal qualifications. "It was very British," he notes dryly. "I didn’t have the right paper qualifications."

Now in his mid-30s, married to an Australian and with children and a mortgage, he realized his career had plateaued. One day, while reading Nature, he saw an ad for a photographic laboratory director at the newly opened Anglo-Australian Observatory. "This job seemed perfect," he recalls.

He applied and soon relocated to Australia. "I dove right in, knowing little about astronomy when I joined. Everyone was new, everything was fresh. It was quite an adventure—if you survive, you learn to swim quickly."

Astronomers continually strive to extract more light from faint celestial objects. Even into the 1990s, they utilized large glass plates with specialized photographic emulsions that were more sensitive than film.

Using his chemistry background, Malin experimented with techniques to enhance the plates' sensitivity, including baking them to eliminate oxygen and water, then soaking them in hydrogen gas. This process drastically improved their sensitivity, allowing for more efficient capturing of distant galaxies.

Once the right formula was discovered at the UK Schmidt Telescope, the sensitivity of the plates improved up to thirtyfold. This allowed multiple exposures of the same object within a single session, enabling the combination of images to reveal even the faintest features.

Malin drew inspiration from James Clerk Maxwell's early work on color photography, adapting it to extract greater detail and color from astronomical plates.

The results were groundbreaking, and soon the astronomical community was abuzz with excitement over the AAO's vivid new images of deep space. Delicate pink clouds and electric blue formations around young stars became visible for the first time, and Malin's techniques were quickly dubbed "malinisation," gaining worldwide adoption.

Suddenly, this humble chemist found himself collaborating with prominent astronomers globally. "Astronomers often told me, 'I've observed this object and know its spectrum, but I never imagined it would look like that,'" he chuckles. "Color is a powerful tool for astronomers, and many had never seen these objects in color before."

Along the way, he inadvertently discovered another category of galaxies, known as "shell galaxies," characterized by faint, sharp-edged features thought to result from massive galactic collisions billions of years ago. Additionally, he has an asteroid named after him: 4766 Malin.

So when did Malin truly become an astronomer? "That's a thought-provoking question," he muses. "To me, an astronomer has years of education and formal qualifications. I lack that background but have made some useful discoveries with my limited knowledge."

"I’m not a conventional astronomer, but I've made contributions," he concludes.

Despite considering himself an incomplete astronomer, David Malin has significantly influenced the field. Over 25 years at the Anglo-Australian Observatory, he published more than 120 scientific papers on astronomy and photography.

Ironically, the very techniques that revolutionized astronomical photography were eventually surpassed by digital technology. In 1992, charge-coupled devices (CCDs) emerged as affordable and powerful tools for astronomy, capable of capturing over 80% of incoming photons, compared to only 5% with photographic plates.

"While they are incredibly efficient, it took time to match the quality of photographic plates," Malin explains. "The plates fit well into large telescope focal planes, while CCDs, being small, need to be assembled into arrays, which can be tricky but effective."

"Initially, CCDs were costly, but as mass production of digital cameras began, standards improved dramatically," he adds.

Was he disappointed that his reign was brief? "Not at all," he responds. "Anything that helps us capture the limited photons from telescopes is fantastic. We knew they would enhance scientific exploration."

However, CCDs did shift astrophotography from an art form to a technical process. "It stripped away some of the artistry involved in processing and color extraction."

The concept of color in astronomy is often misunderstood. We typically associate colors like red with heat and blue with cold, but this does not apply to stars, which are 'blackbodies' that neither reflect light nor allow it to pass through.

So which star is hotter: red or blue? A star's color indicates its surface temperature, ranging from a few thousand degrees to 40,000°C. The hottest stars are blue or blue-white, while cooler stars appear red. The key to accurate color extraction lies in calibrating them to known temperatures.

"Each star has a distinct spectrum," Malin explains. "If you know the blackbody temperature in a specific field of view, that serves as your calibrator for color balance."

"When people use digital cameras to photograph the night sky, they often produce a blue image, which is inaccurate. The sky is more greenish," he adds. "Cameras don't account for blackbody colors, so they often render the Milky Way in blue or magenta, whereas it's more of a messy yellow. Our eyes can't perceive the true colors, but cameras can—if calibrated correctly."

In 2000, Malin received the Lennart Nilsson Award for his contributions to astronomical photography, awarded by Sweden's Karolinska Institute, the same organization that bestows the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

The following year, he retired from the AAO, coinciding with the establishment of the David Malin Awards, an annual astrophotography competition organized by John Sarkissian at the Parkes Radio Observatory. Malin serves as a judge, with winning images showcased in an annual exhibition across Australia.

In addition to the awards, he has authored or co-authored 12 books, including Ancient Light, A Portrait of the Universe and Heaven & Earth: Unseen by the Naked Eye, and his works have been exhibited in galleries across Australia, Britain, Sweden, and the United States.

Malin remains an Adjunct Professor of Scientific Photography at RMIT University in Melbourne, curating a vast collection of stunning color images created during his quarter-century of celestial observation, bringing color to a universe that once existed only in monochrome.