In the northern hemisphere they have
Messier Marathons.
I am suggesting a
Southern Gems Marathon for the southern hemisphere.
A
Southern Gems Marathon is an attempt to find as many
Southern Gems as possible in one night. Depending on the location of the observer, and month, there is a different number visible.
The 116 objects in this list are the NGC and IC objects that were catalogued by James Dunlop and described in the book
Deep Sky Companions – Southern Gems by
Stephen James O’Meara.
https://www.amazon.com.au/Deep-Sky-C.../dp/1107015014
James Dunlop made a catalogue of clusters, nebulae and galaxies in 1826 from Parramatta, NSW with a 9” (23cm) aperture, 9’ (274cm) long homemade reflector. Its speculum mirrors reflected the same amount of light as a modern 6” (15cm).
The NGC and IC data is from
Dr Wolfgang Steinicke’s excellent website
http://www.klima-luft.de/steinicke/ngcic/ngcic_e.htm
The attached files give
1. the number of Southern Gems objects at midnight for each month and
2. data for each object.
Notes
William Herschel and James Dunlop were the foremost discoverers of large, bright deep sky objects.
If you list the 200 largest and 200 brightest galaxies and the 100 largest and 100 brightest globular clusters you will find that:
189 were discovered by William Herschel
51 were discovered by James Dunlop
28 were discovered by John Herschel
25 were discovered by Charles Messier and
22 were discovered by Pierre Mechain
A longer list of Dunlop objects is here
https://researchonline.jcu.edu.au/10919/
It does not include the large number of objects Dunlop discovered in the LMC and SMC.