Star is born, so they name galaxy after him Astrophotographer
David Malin at his Sydney home. Photo: Jacky Ghossein It's the
ultimate claim to fame. David Malin, world-famous photographer
of the stars, has a galaxy named after him. It may be far, far
away - one billion light years distant - but Malin 1 is the
largest disk galaxy ever discovered, six times bigger than our
own Milky Way. And Mr Malin, who will present a lecture at the
Melbourne Planetarium this Thursday, found it using photographic
techniques that he developed. "Galaxies are made of stars, often
thousands of billions of them, but this one contained very few
stars, so it was faint," said the British-born
astrophotographer, who moved to Australia to establish a
photographic lab at Sydney's Anglo-Australian Observatory in
1975. "I detected this thing, and my collaborators then pointed
a radio telescope in that direction. "They called it Malin 1 to
try and make me find some more. More have been found, but not by
me. It's up to Malin 3 now." Trained