Moorhead, Minnesota

The total lunar eclipse is just concluding as I am writing this. I was up early taking photos of the “blood moon.” I know there are many professional and amateur photographers with far more experience than I. My purpose in posting these images is to ask for your comments on improvements that could be made to the technique and equipment.

Details on the opening photo:

Nikon D7000
f/6.3
0.8 seconds
ISO 3200
Tamron 18-270 mm zoom set to 270 mm
Manual focus
Vibration compensation turned off (as recommended in the manual for tripod-mounted shots)

I used Adobe Lightroom to crop and process the photo, tweaking exposure, saturation, and noise reduction. My question for experts is why there appears to be a small amount of camera movement. You can see it in the star left of the moon.
The camera was mounted on a tripod, focus set to manual, mirror up (live view), and shutter triggered by a wireless remote. All photos exhibited this tiny motion or worse. I suspect it’s something in the camera.

This image was taken at 5:14 AM CDT a few minutes prior to total eclipse.

This image was taken at 5:51 AM CDT and represents a minor cropping for placing the moon in the upper right location.

I look forward to any comments or constructive criticism you may have.

John Steiner