What are these moving stars?

Question

I was looking at the stars a little while ago, and I swear to God I saw one moving. It was not a plane because it was too high up there, didn't blink, and was moving way too slowly. There are no clouds in the sky so it's not like i just got the illusion they were moving. I know I saw the star like floating around slowly. I also saw some shooting stars but instead of having an orange tail like most meteors it left a white streak. Are these related?

Answer 1

Most likely it is a satellite.  One possibility, though, is that it could be a comet.  Comets are basically "dirty snowballs", and when the ice melts while gliding through our atmosphere, it leaves a white or yellowish tail.

Answer 2

The streaking things regardless of color are probably meteors.  We are currently experiencing one of the more active meteor showers, the Perseids, and as usual, there are also a couple of minor showers going on.  

As for satellites, the brightest is the space station, which is even brighter than Jupiter and moves across the sky quite rapidly.  Other satellites visible to the naked eye, although not as bright, include Lacrosse (a USA spy satellite), Genesis 1 and 2, the Hubble telescope, a couple Russian Kosmos satellites, and a few others.

There are websites such as Heavens-Above.com and spaceweather.com/flybys which tell you what is currently visible, so you can check against their listing

Answer 3

More than likely what you're seeing are satellites. Satellites can be seen at certain times of night, usually early evening, when the sun is below the viewer's horizon, but still high enough to reflect off of a passing satellite. The satellites will disappear from view when the sun passes below the horizon of the passing satellites. They are more frequently visible during the summer because the sun is never too far down during summer months, even later at night.

Answer 4

All the stars in the sky, due to the rotation of the earth, appear to move together at a uniform rate.  When you say floating around I am not really sure what you mean but if it is a star, planet, satellite, or meteorite it would move in one direction at a constant rate.

Answer 5

The moving star sounds like a satellite to me. I don't know what would cause the white tail though.