Serendipity ((n.) luck, finding good things without looking for them) has a role in astronomy.
An astronomer,Gordon Garmire, noticed that the face-on spiral galaxy NGC 1232 had never been observed in X-rays before. At a distance of just 60 million light years (I know, or "just," but that's not too far absent as galaxies go) the Chandra X-ray Observatory should be able to see approximately 100 point sources; that is, unresolved sources of X-rays like black holes gobbling down matter, and fiercely hot magnetic neutron stars,gas from exploding stars, and the like.
Source: blastr.com