On a cold February night in 1946, a 15-year-old schoolboy made a surprising discovery as he peered out of his bedroom window.

Michael Woodman, a keen amateur astronomer from Newport, had stayed up late waiting for his father to come home when he noticed something strange in the night sky.

“There was the constellation of Corona Borealis, but in the ring of the Corona, the second star down was bright – very bright,” he explains.

“And I thought ‘I’ve never seen anything like that before.'”