Spinoffs from supernova hunting
Even I have to admit it: supernova hunting is boring. I take pictures of 10,000 galaxies per year, on average, and I'll find only 5 supernovae in that time period. Another way to look at it is that I shoot galaxies on 250+ nights per year. Thus, you could either say that I look at 9,995 galaxies per year and don't find a supernova in any of them, or you could say that I search for supernovae on 245 nights per year and don't make a discovery. That's a lot of time spent, and a lot of galaxies imaged with no discoveries made! Now you take ol' M 95 here, for instance. I've shot this galaxy on 73 nights over the past 10 years, and I've never discovered a supernova in it. In 2012, I heard about a supernova in M 95, and I took some pictures of it. But that wasn't a "discovery" for me. And I haven't seen a supernova in it since then. So, you could also say that I've been looking at this galaxy for 13 years without finding a supernova in it. Yea...