Altazimuth mount

An altazimuth mount is a telescope mount with two independent axes, one for altitude, moving up and down, and one for azimuth, moving left and right, the same basic motion as a photography tripod head. There is no need to align an axis to the celestial pole, which makes an altazimuth mount fast and intuitive to set up and point, especially for casual, visual-only observing.

The simplicity comes at a cost for tracking: because celestial objects appear to move diagonally across the sky rather than along either single axis, an altazimuth mount needs both axes adjusted continuously to keep an object centered, which is manageable by hand at low power but becomes tedious at high magnification. Motorized and GoTo versions of altazimuth mounts solve this by driving both axes together automatically.

Altazimuth mounts are the standard choice for Dobsonian telescopes and for lightweight grab-and-go setups where quick setup matters more than precision tracking for long-exposure photography. A common point of confusion is assuming any computerized mount must be equatorial, when many affordable GoTo telescopes actually use an altazimuth design, which is perfectly capable of visual GoTo use but generally less suited to long-exposure imaging without extra field-rotation correction.