What is the BAM600?
The BAM600 is a list of 600 observing targets for the Southern Hemisphere, covering all different types of targets and catering to various telescope apertures and observer experience.

How did it come about?
John Bambury is one of the core volunteers for the Three Rivers Foundation in Australia who do a lot of outreach astronomy. In addition to this 3RF regularly host small and large groups of observers from the US to Australia with a bi-annual astronomy tour called OzSky.

John's role with 3RF is “Observations Officer”. As most of the US visitors have a very short observing time down here (8 days per trip), he decided it would be beneficial to them if he put a comprehensive observing list together. John said he wanted to do something similar to the Herschel 400 for Southern Hemisphere observers and for the US visitors who came down to Australia.

John put the list together himself by incorporating several of the known common lists ( eg. Messier, Caldwell, etc), and then including a lot of targets he had observed himself over many years and by consulting with some of his observing colleagues on some of their favourite targets in each target category, which were “not” part of the common lists.

In 2009 the Astronomical League added the BAM600 target list as a “supplementary list” to their Southern Skies Telescope Club Observing Badge List.

The Files
The list is attached as an excel spreadsheet with targets sorted in Right Ascension (RA) order. You can re sort the list to suit your own observing goals.
BAM600_-_John_Bambury_Southern_Skies_Observing_List.zip 75.22 KB
The BAM600 list. Unzip the file and open in Excel.

BAM600_Southern_Skies_List_in_AN_format.txt 61.16 KB
The BAM600 list as a text delimited file for uploading as a User Defined Catalogue to the Argo Navis DTC.

BAM600-skytools.zip 9.85 KB
The BAM600 list as a SkyTools file for uploading into SkyTools.

How to Use The List
John says you can observe the list in whatever way suits you to fit in with your available observing time. Most people will take a couple of years to work through the list.

A good way to start off might be to sort the list and allocate targets to each “planned” observing night based on “best month to observe”, setting your observing program for each night to observe targets rising towards the zenith from the East.

By doing it this way you will always have the targets on your program for the night well placed and you should be able to work through them all systematically.

Definitions and Abbreviations
BN = Bright Nebula
CS = Carbon Star
DN = Dark Nebula
EG GC = Extra Galactic Globular Cluster
EN = Emission NebulaGal = Galaxy
Gal CL = Galaxy Cluster
GC = Globular Cluster
MS = Multiple Star
OC = Open Cluster
PN = Planetary Nebula
SR = Supernova Remnant
Star = Star
VS = Variable Star