Today I'll be talking through all the pros and cons of beginner deep-sky-est photography, like with a DSLR, using a refractor telescope, meaning a telescope that bends light through lenses typically made of glass, versus a reflector, meaning a telescope that reflects the light off of mirrors ground to a particular shape. And I'm going to be approaching this from a budget standpoint. So that means that these are both on the low end in terms of price at around $300 USD. In addition to talking through all of the pros and the cons, if you stick around I'll show you the results from each of these two telescopes. I photographed an emission nebula with a DSLR, just a basic DSLR, using each telescope on the same night. A couple quick disclosures. I already owned this 6-inch F5 Apertura branded reflector. It's a Newtonian. When I bought it, it was $150 USD. Highpoint Scientific did loan me an Apertura coma corrector to use with it. And that goes for $120 USD. So the total for this setup is $270 USD. I think the price of this Newtonian has gone up to $200 USD. This SV Boney SV48 refractor, SV Boney loaned me this for the purpose of this review. It goes for around $300 USD. It depends on the current sale. At the time of making this video, like right now, it was $275 USD. It does come with a hard-sided case, while this one doesn't come with a case. If you're interested in either scope, there are direct purchase links down below in this video description. And I'm going to discuss these two telescopes in depth, but I want to explain right off the bat that technically I'm comparing to OTAs, which stands for Optical Tube Assembly. And the reason this, if I just take this off of here, is an OTA and not a telescope is because technically a telescope includes the mount, which these don't if you're buying them for $300. And you can't effectively use these scopes for astrophotography without a motorized mount. It's become quite normal in the astrophotography world to buy your OTA or your telescope and the mount separately rather than as one unit. And that is really the way that I recommend doing it because you have a lot more flexibility if you buy the mount and the scope separately, and then you could upgrade to a different telescope or upgrade to a different component without throwing out the whole thing. It just gives you a lot of flexibility in how you build your kit. So while these are technically OTAs, I'm just going to be calling them probably telescopes or scopes for short in this video. But now you know why that term exists. And OTA just means the telescope without the mount, even though you can't use it that way. And we are going to go much more in depth about matching OTAs two mounts later in this video. So I won't belabor the point here, but to sum up, you really just have to think of these scopes as a part of a system of components that make up your whole astrophotography kit. And I have another video just on different kinds of kits out there, but it's quite normal for the scope to be significantly cheaper than the mount. And when I say significant, I mean that like a good astrophotography mount like this EQ6R is something like five times the price of the telescope. And it's normal to be in the range of three to four times your telescope for the mount. And if you're already thinking this is insane, I don't have that kind of money to spend on this hobby, please know there are alternate paths to get started in astrophotography, including deep sky, like shooting nebulas and galaxies. And that path is just do it without a telescope. Just use a normal camera lens on a DSLR and on a tripod. And I've covered that pretty extensively on this channel in other videos. So if you are new to my channel and you're wanting, you know, my advice for someone brand new to all of this, meaning deep sky astrophotography, check out those videos first. For everyone else, let's go ahead and jump in. So let's first talk about refractors. In terms of telescopes for astrophotography, most people who are experienced will tell you start with a refractor. And you might be wondering, why is that the standard advice? Well, you can see they're generally smaller, they're a lot lighter, and they're very similar in design to camera lenses. You can just think of this as a long telephoto lens. It's exactly the same thing, basically. And the way that it works is the light comes in the front. It gets bent into shape and focused down here on this side and hits the camera sensor. And the glass lenses here are cemented into place right in the tube. They stay in that position. They're in the right position. So all you have to worry about is getting your camera connected to the focuser back here and focusing it with this nice dual speed focuser here that also has a lock underneath. And so pretty simple, really. I mean, I find it easier even than using a camera lens to get focused with this. It's really nice. Often, you'll see with refractors, people use an additional component called a field flabber, which complicates it a little bit, but really does help improve the shape of the stars out to the edges of a large sensor like we have here with a Canon EOS T7. It's pretty common to find field flatteners or flattener reducers that can correct out to a crop sensor size, like with this camera. It is much harder to find ones that will really correct out to the corners of a full frame sensor. They do make them, but usually they're quite a bit more expensive. So just expect to pay more the bigger your sensor. For this comparison, I actually didn't use a field flabber, mostly because SV Boney doesn't make a dedicated field flabber for this telescope, the SV48. They do make them for some of their other refractors like the SV503 in different focal lengths. And I'll talk more about that a little bit later on. This particular refractor, the SV48 has a 90 millimeter front aperture. It has a focal length of 500 millimeters, which gives it a focal ratio of F5.5. I think this is a pretty nice focal length for deep sky astrophotography if you have a motorized mount. In addition to these specs, it's important to note that this is a doublet, meaning inside here there are just two glass elements in the tube. And it's what we call an acromatic as opposed to apochromatic. An apochromatic telescope has at least three elements. An acromat is a type of refractor design that is bringing at least two wavelengths of light to the same focal plane, while a triplet and apochromatic design brings three wavelengths of light to focus. And what that allows you to do is pretty much eliminate what we call chromatic aberration, which shows up in deep sky astrophotographs as just little color fringing around the stars, especially the bright stars. So this telescope, just being an acromat, will have some of that chromatic aberration, meaning the fringing on the stars.  One is that the cost goes down considerably. This OTA is only $275 new at the time of recording. And also the weight goes down considerably. This telescope is only 2.2 kilograms, or 4.9 pounds. And weight is important when it comes to possible mounts that we could put this telescope on. You can see here it's on my iOptron Smart EQ, and it's balancing just fine. Now let's turn to reflectors, and specifically the cheapest ones you can usually find are called Newtonian reflectors, or simply Newts for short. And of course they're named after Sir Isaac Newton, who invented this type of telescope. And the way that a Newtonian reflector works is there is a primary mirror down there at the bottom, and the aperture, in this case a six inch Newtonian reflector, is measured off of the diameter of the primary mirror. So light travels down the front here, back up, and hits this. This is the secondary mirror up here at the top held in by the spider, or the secondary holder, whatever you want to call it. And that secondary mirror is at a 45 degree diagonal to the camera here at the end of the focuser. And so again, light travels straight down the tube. There is this little bit of an obstruction, but that's fine because plenty of light rays get in all around it. It hits the primary mirror, reflects back up onto the secondary mirror, and then reflects out here through the focuser, which you can see is here on the side. So you don't look down at the bottom, you're looking up here at the side. And or at the top, however you position the camera. And this Newtonian is designed for imaging, meaning the position of the mirrors and the way that the focuser works allows a DSLR to reach focus. You can't just go out and buy any Newtonian reflector and expect a DSLR to reach focus because a lot of them there's not going to be enough inward travel on the focuser to actually reach focus with a DSLR, which has the sensor pretty far back. They're designed with the idea of having a visual eyepiece there. So if you do have like a Dubsonian, that's the type of mount, but it's a Newtonian reflector on a Dubsonian mount, you might need a Barlow lens to actually use a DSLR, which isn't ideal for deep sky. So when shopping for a Newtonian, if you really aren't sure if it will work for imaging, meaning putting your DSLR directly onto the focuser, and it doesn't say in the description, I'd recommend reaching out to one of the non-commissioned advisors at High Point Scientific and asking them about different telescopes you're looking at and they will be able to tell you which ones will work with a camera and which ones are designed only for visual use, meaning with an eyepiece. Now when we use a Newtonian with a camera, it's typical to use what's called a coma corrector. And we attach the coma corrector to the T adapter on the camera here, just like this. And then we just slide it right into the two inch focuser, just like that. And the reason we use a coma corrector when shooting the stars is otherwise all the stars away from the center of the field. So the field of view is just defined as the light that's coming here and hitting the sensor. All those stars that are away from center will have coma, which is short for chromatic aberration. And coma just means that the stars won't be round. Instead of nice round stars, you'll get something more like an egg or an oval. And these ovular stars, they'll get longer and longer the further away that you get from the center of the field. Now this is somewhat the same problem with a refractor and why we use a field flattener. But I think it's even worse with a reflector. So I'd always recommend using a coma corrector unless you're doing something like planets. Because with a planet, it's so small you're only going to use the very center of the field. And then when you're just using the very center of the field, it's going to be nice and sharp and you don't have to bother with a coma corrector. Usually you really couldn't anyways because you're usually using a barlow lens attached to the camera. So it's not really a concern. Anyways, so if you're shooting the stars, nebula, galaxies, anything like that, use a coma corrector. And I think there are three main reasons why this kind of OTA, meaning a bigger, bulky reflector, is not recommended more to brand new beginners to astrophotography. Usually these days, I think that it's we're seeing a shift where the standard advice is going to these away from mirror based scopes. So the number one reason is that they're moderately heavy. So you really need a mount that can handle that weight. The counterweight on this is quite a bit bigger than this. And that's because this one is nearly six kilograms just the OTA or 13 pounds before I even put the coma corrector on or the camera or any other stuff that you might want, like a guider. And so 13 pounds that rules out using it with a very small mount or tracker. I can't use it on my iOptron Smart EQ here because the literal weight limit of this Smart EQ is 12 pounds. So just the scope weighs more than what I could put on top of this one. And a six inch, this size is actually pretty small for a reflector. In the States, at least it's hard to find a smaller newt than a six inch. Okay, so that was the first reason weight number two, and it goes with weight, is they're much bulkier and longer than a refractor. Especially you can get lots of small refractors, or you could get a small kata diopteryx scope like Schmidt-Cassegrain. And those will both a refractor and a Schmidt would be would be smaller and more compact than a Newtonian reflector. And the sheer size of a Newtonian can really be a problem if you don't have protection against the elements, especially wind and wind gusts. Because even with a good mount, like this Skywatcher EQ6R, I've run into wind gusts that will just completely ruin an exposure with a Newtonian. But with a refractor, it wouldn't be a problem if I was using the same mount. And the reason for that is because just look at the surface area here of this telescope compared to this telescope. That much larger surface area is going to catch the wind much more and basically act like a wind sail. And so when there's a wind gust, it pushes against this larger surface area and that disrupts the very sensitive mount, which is tracking the night sky. The third reason these scopes aren't recommended as much, I think, and this one is sort of silly is is collimation. What collimation is, is you every time you move this scope, the mirrors can get a little bit off because they're they're just in there sort of a little bit more loosely, especially the primary than the glass elements in our refractor. And that slightly disrupts the positioning of the mirrors. The mirrors actually just sitting in there with gravity held in by mirror clips. And it's it's basically just sitting down at the bottom of the scope. So collimation just means changing the positioning of the primary mirror and the secondary mirror a little bit so that they line up and then the everything it lines up with the focuser and your camera so that everything is is aligned. And so that's collimation. And you do need some collimation tools you'll have to buy separately. And there are different choices when it comes to collimation tools and collimators. Personally I use a red laser collimator that has an attachment so you can do both adjustments for the secondary and the primary. Newtonians are generally considered the easiest type of reflector to collimate. And once you get the hang of it, whatever collimation system you use and find a system that works for you, it really isn't too big of a deal. With my laser collimator, I can do it pretty fast. It really just adds like a few minutes to make sure you did it right. And you don't have to wait for it to get dark either to collimate. You can collimate during the day. So it really doesn't take any time away from imaging. So that's why I said it's a little bit of a silly reason not to get a Newtonian because, you know, collimation is not a big deal. I think the bigger issues again are the weight and the size being a wind sale and then having a really an adequate mount to actually hold a Newtonian because a lot of people think that they can maybe just get this nice cheap Newtonian again I paid $150 for this and then go with a cheaper mount like this smart cue and it's really not a good idea. Okay. One last thing to keep in mind with Newtonians specifically is that it's hard to find them with shorter focal lengths like you can get with a refractor. This one is again smaller on a smaller size and it's 750 millimeter focal length at f5. You can go down to f4 and get a slightly shorter focal length like 600 millimeters but then at f4 everything is a little bit more demanding in terms of collimation and the mount and everything else. So I personally like f5 it's a little bit more forgiving and then 750 millimeters is a pretty long focal length. If you really like the wide stuff, you're probably going to be looking at refractors and the wide focal length is also going to be more forgiving, which goes with the smaller mounts and so on. So that's one other thing to keep in mind. Okay. Now that I've talked about all of the details of these two types of telescopes, let's talk a little bit more about the pros and cons of each. So while pros and cons, they're going to be a little bit more specific to these particular models. Again, this is the Apertura f5 6 inch and the SV bony 90 millimeter SV 48. I think a lot of this commentary is going to apply to any budget acromatic refractor, just like this one, or any budget imaging Newtonian, just like this one. And the reason I feel somewhat confident in that is these are not my first acromat or my first imaging Newtonian I've had more in the past, we'll just leave it at that. The biggest pro of this SV bony is it five pounds and much smaller overall. It's going to work a lot better on smaller mounts, which we've already talked about. And this Ioptron smart EQ has a weight limit again of 12 pounds, but you really don't want to go up to that 12 pounds with smaller mounts like this and cheaper mounts. You really don't want to go to the extreme of the payload limit. So with a lightweight scope like this, I don't have to worry about it. My counterweight is actually show it here, not even extended very far to get balance. And so this will work. It's a little bit tough at 500 millimeters. But if you stick to short exposures, this setup can work. And this mount retails for $560, so pretty reasonable. With a six inch Newtonian, I would never suggest putting an amount this small. It's just going to be an exercise in frustration, honestly. You're going to be throwing out most of your data, I would think. If there's any little trickle of wind, your exposure is ruined. So the pro here is the budget refractor is lighter weight, which means more options in terms of mounts and, importantly, less expensive mounts. The Smart EQ is not necessarily where I would start with a mount. If I really could advise you to pick one, I would say something like the Skywatcher HEQ-5 is a better starting place. And then it lets you upgrade a lot faster and in different directions. So I think this isn't my favorite mount, but you could use this one with something like a very lightweight achromat. But let's say you already have a very heavy mount, a nice heavy mount. You've taken the advice of these expert astrophotographers who say, start with the mount, spend a bunch on that, and you have something like this EQ-6R. In that case is the lightweight of this pro, it still sort of is, but it's really not a big deal because this mount will take the higher weight of this telescope just fine. Again, size does make a difference. And again, this is a pro for the refractor, which is a much smaller size and a con for the Newt. The size of the Newtonian just means that if you're going to be someone who's often imaging in windy conditions, that actually doesn't really describe me. But if you think that you're often going to be out in wind gusts of more than 15-20 miles per hour, then you're really going to want to think about how to protect this whole kit from the wind so that this telescope doesn't act as a wind sale. There's lots of different methods for doing that. The easiest might just be park your car so that when you feel the prevailing winds, your car is providing sort of a block from the main wind direction. Another way to do it is investing in some kind of structure. So if you have a backyard, maybe you could invest in a garden shed where the roof comes off, store your telescope in there and image from it, or a skybox observatory, which is just something made out of pipes and tarps that you can put down onto the ground and stake down. Okay, let's now turn to a big con of the refractor and a pro for the reflector, which is image quality and your options to improve image quality with DIY solutions. The image quality of an achromat is really nothing to write home about. It's just okay, especially for deep sky, really any astrophotography. The big problem with achromats is that they bloat the blue stars or anything bright, the moon and planets, and that will result in chromatic aberration. I'm just going to be talking about deep sky, so that's chromatic aberration on all the bright stars, and it also just affects color correction in general. The DIY solution to help with at least the bloating, the chromatic aberration is to get a minus violet filter, which is okay. It's usually pretty well with controlling the bloating. The other issue is field flatteners, in my experience, work best when they are designed for the particular telescope in question. I know that some companies, I think Hotec, make a generic field flattener for different focal lengths, but in my case, I was looking for a matched field flattener. They don't have one for the SV Boney SV48, as I mentioned earlier, and so in that case I didn't use one. If I did want to get an SV Boney scope that has a matching field flattener, you can see the price goes up quite a bit. That's been my experience. You can get a cheap refractor like this, SV Boney SV48, or another one I've used is the Orion Short Tube 80 ST80, but then there's not much you can do to improve image quality outside of the minus violet filter, because there's usually no particular good way to flatten the field. I could throw money at generic field flatteners and try to find one that works, but I don't really want to throw more at the field flattener than I did at the telescope. At that point, it really just makes more sense to me just to upgrade the telescope and get a field flattener. What you're looking for when you're looking at upgrade options from this in a refractor is a doublet with an ED glass element. That ED stands for extra low dispersion, and those telescopes usually also have a matching field flattener or even more common, probably a flattener slash reducer available that works with that particular telescope, knowing the design of the telescope, and it really does a really good job. When you put all that together, a ED doublet with a field flattener can deliver some serious performance. I think 90% there to a triplet, but you're looking at least double the cost of this SV48. It's like the SV48 is 300, the cheapest ED doublet refractor with a field flattener is probably going to be 600, and then if you're looking at triplets and with field flatteners, you're looking at 1200, so it just keeps doubling up in price. One that I can recommend is the Apertura 60EDR kit, which is $600 and in stock right now. I'd also be interested in looking at the SV Boney ones that have field flatteners. The Newtonian is a completely different story in terms of upgrades that can affect image quality and actually make the image quality quite a bit better. If you are a DIY-er, there's all kinds of cool stuff you can do to upgrade this telescope, and this is especially true of budget Newtonians, which typically have very good mirrors but just need better work on the mechanics. The biggest impact is going to be getting a coma corrector. This isn't really DIY, but it's just something I'll mention again. For $120, you can get the Apertura one, works really well. I'd consider the coma corrector essential. So I wouldn't even think of a coma corrector as being a separate cost to a Newtonian. Just bake that in when looking at the telescope, unless you're doing planetary. The one I have here is a Telavu paracore, which is a lot more expensive than something like the Apertura, but really just for a very small difference in performance. I tested them both, and looking at it again, I probably wouldn't get the paracore just because the performance difference is so small. The key thing is just to get one and make sure that you read up on the back focus requirements. Most of them, they just have a 55 millimeter back focus, so if you're using a DSLR, it's pretty simple. You just get the T adapter for your camera. You screw it on to the coma corrector and then attach it to your DSLR. Really easy. It just slides right into the two inch focuser. You tighten that down and focus. Now one thing I should mention is sometimes I have had the problem of the coma corrector peaks down into the tube and causes problems, so I don't really know the solution to that other than probably just get spacers for your coma corrector or something like that. You're also probably looking at spacers if you want to use a coma corrector with a astronomy camera like a ZWO or a QHY, but if you're that far along into the hobby, that's sort of a different video, and I think these days actually the spacers are coming with the astronomy cameras. There's lots of other DIY projects though you can do with a Newtonian. For instance, there's fan projects to get rid of tube currents, heat trapped inside the tube. There's 3D printed mask projects to put over the mirror clips, which can cause problems we'll see when we look at the pictures. There's electrical projects to make sure that your secondary mirror doesn't do up, putting a little heater on the back of it. There's advanced collimation techniques. You can go down that road, like the Katzai collimation system, which involves taking your whole telescope apart and applying different little stickers onto the mirror and doing all this stuff. There's a lot of interesting, oh, and focuser improvements. You can buy different focusers and put them on yourself and that can make a big difference because this focuser is a little bit cheap and difficult to use, especially since gravity is pushing down on it. Some people put the camera down here at the bottom, which might be better. Anyways, Budget Newtonian is like DIY heaven. If you really are into that, it sounds like a fun project to like eke out more and more performance from Newtonian. Go for it because as I mentioned, the mirrors in these from GSO are really pretty good no matter where you buy your Budget Newtonian and it's really just the mechanics on the telescope that need all the work. It can be very frustrating, I will say, but if you are into that kind of stuff, if you're good at that kind of stuff, it can be massive improvements. I was saying eke out a little bit of improvement, but if you really put all of those improvements together, it can be night and day. It's something I have to really get a lot better at is all the DIY stuff because the truth is I haven't done a lot of it. I haven't given that part of the hobby as much attention as improving my processing skills and just learning as much as I can about all the different kinds of ways to do astrophotography. My Newtonian here is really just a stock telescope. I've done very little with it. I have the KOMA corrector. I have the collimation tools. I do collimate it and I know how to collimate it, but that's about it. I haven't done any of these improvements that sound so cool and could add a lot. Oh, another one I didn't mention is baffles, so there's all kinds of stuff which collect stray light, but even without all of those DIY hacks, I found that the image quality of the Newtonian bested the budget refractor. That is the final pro and probably the one that a lot of people watching care about the most, and it leads up to the last part of the video where we're going to be actually examining the images that I took with each setup here and I should say with each telescope because everything else about the setup I kept consistent. So I captured these with the same camera, which was an astrogear.net BOTTER modified Canon EOS T7 DSLR, and they both were on my Skywatcher EQ6R, the mount right here, with no auto-guiding, just tracking. And part of the reason that I did that is I was really trying to keep the comparison as fair as I could, so that meant trying to keep the atmospheric conditions as close as possible as well, which means trying to image as quickly as you can. So I just did 15 30-second shots with each telescope right back to back, no guiding, just straight tracking. And I stacked those, I processed them identically in Pixinsight with calibration frames, dark, spiced, and flats, and I also used photometric color calibration. So hopefully after that we really get a sense of the true color correction of each telescope. So here are the resulting photos. Here's the SV Bony SV48 image. This is, of course, of my standard testing object, which is the North America Nebula, centered on the Cygnus wall, or the Mexico region. And here is the Apertura 6-inch F5 Newtonian result. And if we compare with an identical crop in on each, you can see that the larger aperture and also to some degree the higher focal length, which results in a finer pixel scale of the Newtonian, and also importantly the better color correction of the Newtonian, gives us a much more sharper and higher quality image, I think. The stars are a lot smaller, and that really makes a big difference. It literally less the Nebula really shine. And while there is a difference in image scale here, it's not like a huge difference. We're comparing 500 millimeter focal length on the SV Bony to 750 millimeter focal length. Now, if you're really a pixel peeper, meaning you really like to zoom in and look at the stars, like I sometimes do, knowing that you can improve the star performance on a Newtonian through better collimation or whatever, or different DIY hacks, some of the ones I mentioned, that might just drive you mad. This madness has afflicted me in the past. And now I'm mostly fine with how this looks. I guess I've gotten over it a little bit. In the past, when I've tried to tame Newtonians, I had an eight inch F4. I've gotten obsessed with the appearance of the stars, especially the brighter stars, where you can really see the diffraction spikes, but also any problems in the star profile, which becomes so apparent when you're using a big aperture at a fast focal ratio. And I now know that I think these little spikes that aren't the primary diffraction spikes could be cleaned up quite a bit by using a primary mirror mask, one that covers the mirror clips. Because I think that's what's causing those lines in between the main diffraction spikes. I think in the past, I've also had issue with my coma corrector coming down into the telescope.  I'll be uploading these photos, these final stacked photos onto Google Drive and leaving the link in the description if you want to examine them on your own time and really get down into the differences in image quality and things like that. So where does this leave us? Well, the budget Newtonian is more difficult to use, I think. It requires a higher priced mount that can handle the weight and size of a bigger telescope. I'm used to coma corrector, I think that's essential. You also need the collimation tools, some kind of collimator. And possibly you also need wind protection, depending on your environmental conditions. And all of that does add up quite a bit, both in terms of time of how to use this properly, but also, more importantly, money. The overall price of buying new for everything that I used here is definitely going to be over $2,000, probably over $3,000.  So we're talking now 10 times maybe the price of just the telescope. So keep that in mind. If you have the money, I think a Newtonian could make sense, even for a beginner that's a mechanically minded beginner. Someone who has a little experience with astrophotography or astronomy. If you are someone who's already used a lot of Newtonians in amateur astronomy, then this is going to make a lot more sense probably to you. And jumping right into it as a beginner astrophotographer might be a good choice. If you're looking to get started with telescope based astrophotography as cheaply and simply as possible, then I think a refractor does make some sense. And if you, you know, getting an acromatic refractor, if that's all you can afford, yeah, go for it. You can dip your toes in, you can get some experience with the longer focal length, and it's cheaper than, you know, a telephoto lens. So I think it will do just as well as I think some telephoto lenses. And this SV Boney SV48 could be a good choice. It's just as good as other acromats I've tried. If you have a few hundred more dollars to spend and you're really interested in deep sky astrophotography, you want your stars to look better, I'd look at higher end models like the SV Boney SV503 80 millimeter F7. That can be paired with a matched SV Boney field flattener and reducer. That's going to give you a lot better color correction and the tighter stars. It's going to, it would be a much closer comparison to this one, but of course for a lot more money for just the OTA. But something like the Apertura 60 EDR kit, which is a very nice small refractor. That's probably the one I'd recommend if you just have a Star Tracker and you're just wanting to dip your toe into a small telescope. If you could pair it with, you know, a very small mount because it's so short, compact, lightweight and I can show you now a sample image of actually what I did with a combo of the 60 ED and this mount right here, the Ioptron Smart EQ. Okay, since this video I'm sure is over 20 minutes long, you're now seeing all of my current members here on my Patreon campaign. And if you want to see your name in the credits of future long Nebula Photos videos, you can sign up over on patreon.com slash Nebula Photos. And we now have over 500 members, so it's a big, cool community and there are a bunch of benefits outside of just your name in the credits of long videos. Some of those benefits include, I now, I did one exclusive video and I'm working on a second exclusive video just for Patreon. There are monthly Zoom chats where you can ask questions of me and other people on the chat. There is a Discord community, which is really cool, very vibrant, lots of stuff going on there, including monthly imaging challenges with prizes, a quarterly group imaging project where we're all working on the same deep sky object together. And Patreon also has lots of different communication methods. You can direct message me straight through patreon.com. You can also do it on Discord. And so there's a lot of cool ways to connect and really get involved. And so if you want to accelerate your learning further after watching some of my videos, consider joining over on Patreon. It starts at just $1 a month. And again, the link is patreon.com slash Nebula Photos. Until next time, this has been Nico Carver at Nebula Photos. Clear skies.


back to my channel. Today I have a cook and clean with me and I hope that this gives you a lot of motivation to get up and get moving. We've actually been doing a lot of traveling and today I've had to do a lot of cleaning up. But before we get this video started, I wanted to tell you guys, this video is sponsored by HelloFresh. HelloFresh is America's number one meal delivery service and they deliver meals right to your door pre-measured and they're super quick and easy to prepare. You guys know I've worked with HelloFresh before and they have a ton of five star meals that are fit for everybody. So you can get low calorie, vegetarian and family meals. And one thing I really love about them is their portion sizes for families are really large and I often have leftovers. If you're a busy family like ours is, this cuts a lot of stress down because most all of these meals I can whip together in 30 minutes and get them on the table. So no matter if we've been gone all day and come home, it honestly takes less time than take out would to get here and I know that it's healthy ingredients that are high quality. HelloFresh has more than just meals, they also have sides and desserts like cookie dough and garlic bread, things that your family will love. And the other thing that I like is that they are flexible so if you wanna skip a week, you can easily do that. HelloFresh is now $5.66 per serving and like I said, these serving sizes are very great and let's say it's definitely worth it. And before we get cooking, the best part, I have a discount code for you guys in the description box for their New Year's sale. They are running, you will get 10 meals for free if you use the code AdelineZook10 and this includes free shipping as well. Okay, I pulled everything out so that you can see it and I actually got this all yesterday and I pulled everything out last night, put it all in the refrigerator and didn't realize I actually had two packs of fish. One of them was still in the box. I wanted to show you guys how the packaging was and it was between those two ice packs and it was like freezing cold. So even if it arrives on your doorstep and has to sit there a little bit, you don't have to worry about anything going bad. Okay, so they sent me a variety but one thing I really appreciated is they sent a vegetarian dish and you guys know that I had different eating styles and I actually was vegetarian at one point and it's not a bad idea to even pick one meal out of the week to just kind of mix the meat and go for the veggies. So I think this is the one I'm going to be making today. I'm gonna go ahead and get started and just show you guys how easy it is to throw them together. One thing I love about HelloFresh is everything comes in a brown paper bag so I can just put all my little pieces of trash and odds and ends that are left over from the veggies in there and it makes cleanup super easy. I hope this gave you some inspiration to try out some vegetarian meals, try something different. I know that we enjoy a lot of meat dishes in our house but it is great to do new things and also just to incorporate more veggies. So don't forget to check out the link in the description box to get 10 meals for free. So like I mentioned in my last video I think we've done a lot of traveling in the last little while. So we had just gotten home and there was lots of Christmas gifts because we had visited a family and so many things that needed to be put away and gone through and just kind of a general cleanup of the house.  So that's pretty much what my task was for this day was to just get that going and get laundry caught up, all of the things that you need to do to recover from a trip. So if you guys see, I have a new addition to my coffee bar. My sweet mother-in-law got me the Keurig Elite for Christmas and it was seriously the best gift. I love it so much. It heats up really, really fast. If you guys have been looking at Keurig's I would highly recommend it because it has the biggest water tank. I think that they've made so far and so you don't have to fill it as often. It also makes hot water and also makes iced coffee. So it does a lot of great things. And you guys know, I love my coffee and it's been so much fun to try out new K-Cups and yeah, just get to play with my new toy. So when we travel, I often pack our clothes in laundry baskets. That's why you see one sitting there in our room. It's just easier because we're doing road tripping, like to go see my family and Corey's family. So it's not like we have to have a suitcase to go fly or anything like that. So I just fold everything in piles and put it into the laundry basket. Then generally whenever we come home, I can just kind of go through the laundry basket and put things away. Cause if I can do the laundry while I'm at my in-laws or my mom's, it makes it a little bit more convenient that everything's clean whenever I come home. So that is my method. It works out really, really well and I don't really think I'll be changing it anytime soon. What do you guys like to do when I refold laundry? Let me know in the comments. I do like to watch something I don't always and if I'm not watching something, I'm generally listening to like an audio book or a speaker or something like that. But I am actually secretly a documentary nerd. I love the history channel. I always loved history growing up and so sometimes I'll put that on or of course there's always the kid's show options if my daughters are awake and I'm folding laundry alongside them. Whatever is on your to-do list today, I hope this helps to motivate you and you get up and get moving. Whether you're cleaning while I'm cleaning or you're watching and then cleaning, I hope that this gets you in the mood to rock and roll. How do I know you're hurt and you can't let go?  Did your time, how much longer will you suffer in this life? If you're new here, I would love it if you hit the subscribe button, join my channel. I put out a lot of motivating videos and give this video a like for me. Don't forget to check out the links for HelloFresh in the description box and I will see you guys in my next video. All your life you've tried to be a good man inside. Did everything that you thought you should did it seem to do you any good?