G'day, Dillon O'Donnell here. Over the years on this channel I've managed to offend a lot of people and if over the years I have offended you, I just want you to know that that was not my intention. My intention was to offend everybody and if you're offended that I haven't offended you, then good because I will get around to you and this video is going to be one of those videos. Today I'll be talking about 10 pieces of astronomy equipment which I believe are completely useless. Of course this is going to upset vendors and so there is no sponsor on this video but if you want to buy me a beer just click on my links I've earned from affiliate commissions and you know buy a share or something. Anyway my name is Dillon O'Donnell and you're watching Star Stuff. Paper and cardboard planetariums and star charts. Now I used to use these when I was about seven years old. Every month I get a new issue of a straining sky and telescope brilliant magazine. I read it covered a cover but whenever I get to these sections with star charts I've got to be honest I just skip them. I can feel the visual purists rolling their eyes but honestly we have computers for this stuff. This stuff was generated by a computer and then printed on a dead tree so that we could look at it. I don't look at it. I do enjoy Almanacs and I do enjoy having a printed copy of stuff that's going on every year but I will always defer to the computer whether it's the laryum, whether it's the augmented reality sky guide app on my phone or sky safari or something like that. We don't need to cut down trees to look at the stars. Piers. I swear to God so many people leave me comments about you should have had a pier in your observe to Dylan or have you considered a pier or that was really cool but you should have a pier. Really people will have this fetish about peers and I don't understand it. I don't want to be in my observe tree. I want to be inside of remote controlling everything and if you can afford a pier and if you set up a pier that's fine but you cannot tell looking from one person's image to another person's image whether they used a tripod or a pier. If you are polar aligned and if you're all stable and level it doesn't make a difference to the end result and unless something is going to make a difference to the end result of my process I don't see the reason to spend a whole lot of money on it. Next on the list are power bricks. You know the power bricks that you get with cameras and sometimes the vendor will give you a power brick. Sometimes they don't. Sometimes a real custom one that doesn't fit in anything else except that particular product. Here's an old one from a brand I won't dobbing but it comes with not one but two power brick and you know what I'm talking about when they make this bit just a little too big so that you can't plug anything next to it either. That's a huge pet peeve of mine. Thankfully the power situation in astronomy is improving. The next item on the list are for the touch focuses. These are really expensive devices that you do not need to buy. I mean you can if you want to if you're a classisist who wants everything nice and brand specific on your particular telescope but you can replicate what a feather touch focus it does either with a closed peg or a bolt or a piece of foam that goes over the knob. You just have to reduce that gear ratio on the knob itself by making the knob bigger. That will get you pretty much the same effect. If you're manually focusing anyway will it affect the quality of your images at the end of the day whether you use a feather touch focuser from a particular brand or a closed peg. I don't think so. Look at this it's not addicts fault it's just luminance filters in general. This bad boy has never left its case. I mean you can use a luminance filter if you want to and it's a broad spectrum filter so it's going to take basically the whole visual spectrum but in astronomy we actually sometimes want more than the visual spectrum. We do like the bleed over into infrared and we will modify our cameras to catch that. So why would we put a luminance filter on there to shave that off in the first place. What I tend to do in my filter wheel is I just leave the luminance filter blank. So number one in my filter wheel typically is empty. If I want a broadband exposure of a planet or a deep space object I will take the whole spectrum. If you need to improve contrast you can do that in post or if you want a more specific light pollution filter you can throw that in the number one luminance filter spot anyway. So luminance filters I've never actually used one. Little black chops you don't know I'm talking about something that you have in your collection and you don't remember what it does it came in a box it came with something it's probably some specific adapter for some camera or ip or something and because it came in the box you've kept it and you've kept it for about 10 years and you've got no idea where it goes anymore but you'll keep it there anyway because maybe you need it one day for now though it's useless. Dust caps they're a best seller for some reason I don't know why. What happens with dust caps for me is that they're in the box when I take something out I take the dust cap out I put the thing on my telescope and then the dust caps it's on the shelf for the rest of its life. If I ever take something off the telescope I put it in a ziplock sandwich bag. These things are little dust collectors and I don't want them coming in and out of my equipment. Dust caps completely useless. How many times have you got an Allen key from some sort of astronomy vendor and you've used it for the setup and then it sits there forever. The real irony is that I will lose this thing and I'll have to belt. I think I've probably got about four sets of Allen keys just for one specific size that I continually lose but really if you're watching this and you make astronomy equipment don't use Allen screws or hex screws please. If they're not regular screws please make them just make them some sort of thumb screw. Even if they're small thumb screws are just so much more convenient and it saves us having to go to third parties to buy a thumb screw later. Allen keys and different size apertures for screws is just super annoying. Instructions do you have a set of instructions sitting in a nice plastic sheet on your bookshelf far the way just in case you need it. When do you really need instructions to use a telescope? It's a tube with glass on it. At the most it might have some sort of cooling system which is essentially on or off. Other than that all you need are the specs which are the general sizes for connecting different things to it. Sometimes you get instructions from brands and they actually try to explain astronomy as a concept which is a massive concept. You'd need a library of information to explain that. Obviously it's nice to have some sort of guidance but if you like me you get instruction manuals and you don't even look at them. You just put things together and figure it out because it's pretty straightforward unless it's some sort of complicated digital hardware or something like that. Most of the time even with cameras it's plug and play. The number one most useless piece of astronomy equipment I can think of is an eyepiece or your eyes basically visual astronomy. Really if you're still using eyepieces that's good. It's fun to show the family, it's fun to show your neighbours but you really need to grab and do some proper astronomy, get yourself a digital camera and get into this fascinating hobby. You're letting yourself, your telescope and your parents down by not getting into astrophotography. If you enjoyed that video, if you are upset by anything I've said please leave your vitriolic comments below, hit the dislike button and make sure you unsubscribe because really subscription doesn't matter on YouTube anymore. All that matters is that you've actually interacted with the video and then YouTube will just keep hitting you up to watch more. My apathy is extremely inclusive and remember everything is meaningless and we're all going to die.