David Malin's Homepage
If you have stumbled into here you must want to know something about me. What?

Until July 2001, I was a photographic scientist-astronomer with the Anglo-Australian Observatory (now Australian Astronomical Optics, AAO). I am also an Adjunct Professor of Scientific Photography at RMIT University in Melbourne (RMIT).

I retired from the AAO to run my own business, David Malin Images (DMI). Essentially this is the AAO image collection upgraded, enlarged and outsourced, but I have also included (on a separate web site) the work of two other photographers whose work I admire, Akira Fujii who specialised in wide field constellation pictures using film, and David Miller, whose night-time landscapes are unique. I'm also associated with The World at Night (TWAN) group, whose images do digitally what David Miller and Akira Fujii attempted on colour film.

I was born in England in March, 1941 but have lived in Sydney since 1975, when I joined the AAO. Before I moved to Australia I had an 18-year career as a chemist, specialising in optical and electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction and other techniques for exploring the very small. One of my main interests at that time was imaging, both from the scientific perspective and also as a medium for personal expression. Here are some of my optical photo-micrographs, from a previous life in chemistry. That interest has been greatly enhanced in astronomy, and, in general, I enjoy creating powerful images to reveal unsuspected or hidden aspects of the natural world.

Along the way I have devised novel ways of extracting more information from photographs. These techniques have led to some interesting astronomical discoveries as well as being useful advances in photographic science. They have been incorporated into a method of making a series of unique three-colour astronomical photographs. These are identified as AAT, UKS, Caltech and INT on the Home page. Many of these images reveal the unsuspected beauty and glorious colour of astronomical objects, as well as useful scientific insights. Some effort has been made to ensure these unseen colours are as true to nature as possible. I was delighted to receive the Lennart Nilsson Award for this aspect of my work in September 2000.

I live on the northern ourskirts of Sydney with my wife Phillipa. Our three children, James, and our twins Jenny and Sara have long-since left home and we have at least eight grandchildren. In our free time my wife and I enjoy music, travelling, exploring Australia's beautiful coastline and working on and around our house, which has glimpses of Sydney's beautiful Northern Beaches. 

I often get asked about the photographic techniques I have developed, so here is a brief overview of some aspects of it and a more detailed illustrated technical description which is a tour of some of the ideas involved. I have also put together an illustrated bibliography which points to some of the key photographic publications.

Please note: some of the images pages currently hosted by the AAO are out of date and are currently being revised.


Links
More compact listings of publications and other information can be found in:
Contact details

David Malin Images
Ph: +61 2 9997 1914
E-mail

David Malin, 2023, August 1