I cannot help you with any insight into what you saw, but thought I'd
post a similar sighting I had.

Once I viewed a "fuzzy" reddish object while doing my regular evening
satellite viewing/tracking. I happened upon it by chance, while looking
through my binoculars at the night sky. I kept trying to focus this
object, but it remained a fuzz-ball.

It traveled similar speed to a satellite across the southern sky.
Similar speed to night-time aircraft as well.

I have never seen anything like it since. It remains a mystery.

Up, up and away
winfield




wrote:
I posted the following message to sci.astro.amateur a couple of weeks
ago and got no response (big surprise, s.a.a is a cesspool these
days), so I thought I'd try here (which doesn't look much better,
unfortunately). Since posting this, I have read descriptions of "water
dumps" which seem to agree fairly well with what I observed:
---------------------------

At about 00:52 UT on 2007 Nov 1, while looking at the field of
variable star SS Cygni, I observed a small, diffuse object enter the
field from the west. It traversed the 70' field in about three
seconds, but since I immediately recognized it as something weird, I
attempted to track it by moving the telescope, and was able to do so
for roughly 45 seconds, finally losing it behind some trees as it
passed just south of Omicron Andromedae. Observing site was near
34.1N, 84.5W.


The object was roughly 11th magnitude, and perhaps 1.5 arc minutes
across - these of course are very rough estimates, since the object
was moving. I do not think it had any "lights" - it was just a
diffuse, but slightly condensed glow - possibly triangular in shape.
I
do not think it was a bird or other object illuminated from below -
its motion was too direct and uniform.


Its speed and direct motion give every indication of it having been a
satellite (I've seen thousands pass through the field of view in a
telescope), but I''ve never seen one that looked like this! Has
anyone
else ever seen such a thing? Can any satellite experts identify it
based on the information I have provided?