Janey Collier-Long of Oak Ridge moved from landscape photography into astrophotography after a striking backyard moonshot inspired her to pursue celestial subjects. She now concentrates on Orion and the Orion Nebula (M42) and is working to capture the Pleiades, the compact star cluster known as the Seven Sisters (M45). Her images rely on patient technique, long exposures and careful focusing to reveal details invisible to the naked eye.
From Backyard Moonshots to Nebulae: Oak Ridge Photographer Turns Her Lens to the Night Sky
Janey Collier-Long of Oak Ridge moved from landscape photography into astrophotography after a striking backyard moonshot inspired her to pursue celestial subjects. She now concentrates on Orion and the Orion Nebula (M42) and is working to capture the Pleiades, the compact star cluster known as the Seven Sisters (M45). Her images rely on patient technique, long exposures and careful focusing to reveal details invisible to the naked eye.
06:30 PM, 11/20/2025Culture
Janey Collier-Long, a nature photographer based in Oak Ridge, has increasingly turned her camera skyward, finding fresh creative inspiration in the stars above her neighborhood.
Collier-Long first became interested in photography in high school and has long photographed landscapes and nocturnal scenes. A few years ago, a backyard photograph of the full moon pushed her into astrophotography.
“The full moon was coming up in my front yard, and it was around this time of year and I noticed that it would be a good shot. I set it up and I knew because the moon was moving and that the Earth moving I had about five seconds to take the shot. I got off about five photos of it,” Collier-Long said.
That quick sequence of images convinced her to explore other celestial targets beyond Earth’s satellite. She began photographing the famous winter constellation Orion and the bright nebula that lies in the hunter’s sword — the Orion Nebula (cataloged as M42) — which is a cloud of gas and dust where new stars form.
“I started doing a lot of moon pictures, and there’s more up there than just the moon, so that’s when I started seeing if I could get pictures of other things,” Collier-Long said. “I think Orion has become my favorite; I have several really nice shots of Orion.”
Collier-Long explained she has been focusing on the region around Orion’s belt and the sheath of the sword, where the nebula appears as a faint glow through long exposures and careful focusing.
“If you’re familiar with Orion, he’s got three stars that are his belt, and there’s a few stars that go down the sheath (of the sword on the belt). I’ve been focusing on that, and I saw a little bit of a nebula. I’ve been trying ever since to hone in on that, and I still can’t quite get it yet,” Collier-Long said.
Her current project is the Pleiades, the compact star cluster in Taurus commonly called the “Seven Sisters” (M45). Though the cluster can appear as a faint smudge to the naked eye, long exposures and precise focus reveal dozens of stars and subtle nebulosity surrounding the group.
“It’s fascinating to focus on them. You can’t really see it with the naked eye, but it looks sort of like a smudge on the night sky,” Collier-Long said. “When you focus on it, not only is there the seven sisters but there’s an explosion of stars behind it.”
Collier-Long says astrophotography has been a patient pursuit that rewards experimentation with timing, exposure and tracking. She plans to continue refining her technique and capturing deeper, more detailed views of the night sky.