Its 10pm GMT. I'm at Whitstable, Kent in England. If I face face
North, then turn approx 95 - 100 dgrees anti clockwise, (a little past
West) and look up at approx 30 to 40 degrees on the vertical, there is
a bright light, almost static, but obviously the Earth turns so it has
moved a few degrees in the last half hour. It is apparentley flashing
blues and reds and whites. WHAT IS IT?

Greetings, oraccomp!

Isn't it fascinating to watch the sky? It seems pretty likely that
what you are seeing is a satellite, so we'll check into that
possibility.

First, we need to know the latitude and longitude for Whitstable,
Kent, England.
I found it here:
"Whitstable   51.22N   1.02E"
http://www.planetware.com/towns/PRGB.HTM

using the Google Search Strategy
Whitstable latitude longitude
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=Whitstable+latitude+longitude&btnG=Google+Search

Now, go to the Heavens Above astronomy website, and do a free user
registration:
http://www.heavens-above.com/newuser.asp

Once you are allowed to enter the website, then you will need to
"Switch observing sites", then "Add manually" the new observing site.
Enter the following information:

Name: Whitstable, Kent, England

Latitude:
   o North   o South   <-- check the radio button for "North"
  Degrees  51
  Minutes  22 
  Seconds  <leave blank>   

Longitude:  
   o West    o East    <-- check the radio button for "East"
  Degrees  1
  Minutes  02 
  Seconds  <leave blank>   

Elevation  0 <Whitstable is a "Harbour Town", so it is at sea level>

Time zone: select from the pull-down menu
  (GMT+0) United Kingdom, Ireland

Site Number <leave blank>

then click "Submit"

This is now your "observing site".

Look for the section entitled:
"Satellites
10 day predictions for: ISS  |  Envisat"

ISS is the International Space Station: click on that. This brings up
the following table:

ISS - Visible Passes   

Search Period Start:  12:00 Friday, 14 March, 2003  
Search Period End:  12:00 Monday, 24 March, 2003  
Observer's Location:  Whitstable, Kent , England ( 51.3667°N,
1.0333°E)
Local Time:  Greenwich Mean Time (GMT + 0:00)  
Orbit:  783 x 785 km, 98.6° (Epoch 14 Mar) 

Date    Mag       Starts      Max. Altitude      Ends 
              Time  Alt. Az.  Time  Alt. Az.  Time  Alt. Az.  
15 Mar  2.1 03:17:56 19  E  03:17:56 19  E  03:18:57 10  E  
15 Mar -0.5 04:50:19 26  W  04:51:53 59 SSW 04:55:05 10 ESE 
16 Mar  0.0 03:56:07 52 ESE 03:56:07 52 ESE 03:58:41 10 ESE 
16 Mar  0.7 05:28:37 10  W  05:31:23 26 SSW 05:34:08 10 SSE 
17 Mar  2.6 03:02:00 11  E  03:02:00 11  E  03:02:12 10  E  

There isn't even a sighting listed for the International Space Station
in that area of the sky today.


Click the "Back" button on your browser; now click "Envisat". This
brings up the following table (***Unfortunately, it is now after
midnight in the UK, so the March 14 entries no longer appear; I have
copied them here):

Envisat - Visible Passes    

Search Period Start:  12:00 Friday, 14 March, 2003  
Search Period End:  12:00 Monday, 24 March, 2003  
Observer's Location:  Whitstable, Kent , England ( 51.3667°N,
1.0333°E)
Local Time:  Greenwich Mean Time (GMT + 0:00)  
Orbit:  783 x 785 km, 98.6° (Epoch 14 Mar) 

Date    Mag       Starts      Max. Altitude      Ends 
              Time  Alt. Az.  Time  Alt. Az.  Time  Alt. Az.  
14 Mar  4.9 19:08:06 11 ENE 19:09:50 13 NE  19:12:01 10 NNE 
14 Mar  3.2 20:48:42 56 NE  20:48:42 56 NE  20:53:18 10 N  
14 Mar  5.0 22:29:17 22 WNW 22:29:17 22 WNW 22:32:07 10 NW  <--aha!
15 Mar  3.7 20:16:58 35 ENE 20:17:08 35 ENE 20:21:49 10 N  
15 Mar  4.2 21:57:34 37 WNW 21:57:34 37 WNW 22:01:22 10 NNW 

22:29:17 is 10:29 pm Greenwich Mean Time, so it looks like Envisat is
your "UFO".

Click on the "14 Mar" hyperlink in front of 22:29:17, and a star map
appears.
"Visible Pass Details
Whole Sky Chart
This chart show the path of the satellite across the sky. Please note
that East and West are NOT the 'wrong way round' if you hold the chart
over your head to correspond to the view of the sky."

" Event                Time   Altitude Azimuth  Distance(km) 
Leaves shadow        22:29:17  22° 291° (WNW)   1,683 
Maximum altitude     22:29:17  22° 291° (WNW)   1,683 
Drops below 10° alt. 22:32:07  10° 322° (NW )   2,356 
Sets                 22:34:53   0° 336° (NNW)   3,285 "


You can TRY viewing this chart by cutting and pasting this URL into
your Browser "Address" line from the Heavens Above page:
http://www.heavens-above.com/PassDetails.asp?SatID=27386&Session=kebgcgichjbbfbainpfdndlh&Date=37694.9370039379

However, I suspect it will tell you that the Session ID has expired.
I saved this graphic, so that you could still see it, here:
http://www.darkfriends.net/~misc/EnvisatMap1.gif

"Pass Details
Date:  Friday, 14 March, 2003  
Satellite:  Envisat 
Observer's Location:  Whitstable, Kent , England
                      ( 51.3667°N, 1.0333°E) 
Local Time:  Greenwich Mean Time (GMT + 0:00)  
Orbit:  783 x 785 km, 98.6° (Epoch 14 Mar) 
Sun altitude at time of
maximum pass altitude:  -37.1°" 

Detailed Star Chart
http://www.darkfriends.net/~misc/EnvisatMap2.gif

*** You can see from the graphic above that it is just possible what
you were seeing might have been Saturn. If it stayed in roughly the
same place for several hours, it was most certainly not a satellite,
and most likely the planet Saturn. ***


You can see the Ground Track Plot (line on the Earth where it is
traveling directly above) in this graphic:
http://www.heavens-above.com/gtrack.asp?date=37694.9370039379&satid=27386

"The highlighted circle is the region where the satellite is at least
10° above your horizon. The size of the circle depends on the height
of the satellite.
Solid part of orbit shows where the satellite is sunlit, and the
dashed part where it is in the Earth's shadow and invisible."

If that link doesn't work for you, I've saved the graphic here:
http://www.darkfriends.net/~misc/EnvisatMap3.gif

"Envisat Mission and System:
In March 2002, the European Space Agency launched Envisat, an advanced
polar-orbiting Earth observation satellite which provides measurements
of the atmosphere, ocean, land, and ice..."
http://envisat.esa.int/m-s/

"Where Is Envisat?
The current location of Envisat is shown below:"
http://envisat.esa.int/webcam/where_is_envisat.htm


Please note that the saved graphics will be deleted in 30 days, so if
you wish to save them, please download them to your computer right
away.

Additional Search Strategy

Envisat
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=Envisat&btnG=Google+Search


Before Rating my Answer, if you have any questions about this
information, please post a Request for Clarification, and I will be
glad to see what I can do for you.
  
I hope that this Answer provides exactly the information that you 
needed!
  
Regards,

aceresearcher

---

Clarification of Answer by aceresearcher-ga on 15 Mar 2003 07:07 PST

Hello again, oraccomp!

I thought you might enjoy this page with some nice pictures of the
planet Saturn, viewed both with the naked eye and with telescopes, on
the "Occultation of Saturn by crescent Moon - 16 April" 2002, by the
Society for Popular Astronomy:
http://www.popastro.com/sections/occ/satapr16.htm

Search Strategy

Saturn "naked eye"   on Google Images
http://images.google.com/images?q=saturn+%22naked+eye%22&svnum=10&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&filter=0

Again, before Rating my Answer, if you have any questions about this 
information, please post a Request for Clarification, and I will be 
glad to see what I can do for you. 
   
I hope that this Answer has provided exactly the information that you
needed, and that if you see something unusual in the sky in the
future, you now know how to find out what it is. This Question will
alway stay here, so you can come back to this page, and follow these
instructions again.
   
Cheers! 
 
aceresearcher

---

Request for Answer Clarification by oraccomp-ga on 15 Mar 2003 09:52 PST

JBF777,XARQI and JOHNFROMMELBOURNE, thank you for the info and
comments so far. ACERESEARCHER, so far; brilliant, but I have now
purchased (on special offer) a compass. May I now add that the object
was at 10 degrees, from the (level) ground, in the vertical plane and
at 210 degrees from North (obviously through East and South to be in
an Westerly direction). Does this pinpoint it to a tee or should I pay
up and shut and wait for another cosmic event?! :-)

---

Clarification of Answer by aceresearcher-ga on 15 Mar 2003 11:24 PST

oraccomp,

Did the object move only a little over the course of 2-3 hours? or did
it move more swiftly, then disappear?

10º would be just above the horizon. Is that where the object was?

ace

---

Clarification of Answer by aceresearcher-ga on 15 Mar 2003 16:55 PST

oraccomp,

I do believe that Commenter Ian G. has hit the nail on the head.

If you look at the Whole Sky Chart link I posted earlier:
http://www.darkfriends.net/~misc/EnvisatMap1.gif 
You can see that Sirius (which is in the constellation Canis Major)
would appear lower on the horizon, much farther South by Southwest
than Saturn and just a little more South by Southwest than Jupiter.

Further, the link posted by Commenter xarqi
"UFO Sightings Generally Not UFOs Says Astronomer" by Wayne Wyrick,
director of the Kirkpatrick Planetarium, in The Oklahoman (February 6,
2001)
http://www.100megsfree4.com/farshores/ufoaint.htm 
does an excellent job of explaining why stars often appear to flicker,
while for the most part, planets do not; and why Sirius is often
mistaken for a UFO, with lights flashing.

If you sign in to your Main Page at
http://www.heavens-above.com
and click on the link "Whole sky chart" under the "Astronomy" heading,
scroll down to the bottom and change the settings to:
Year 2003  Month 3  Day 14  Hour 22  Minute 0 (10pm)
and click "Submit", you'll see that Sirius (the yellow spot in the
center of Canis Major) is much farther south than Saturn and much
closer to the horizon than Jupiter.

For some excellent photos of Sirius, I searched the NASA "Astronomy
Picture of the Day" site:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod

"Sirius: The Brightest Star in the Night"
Credit & Copyright: Juan Carlos Casado
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap000611.html

"Mediterranean Leonid 2001 
Credit & Copyright: Tunc Tezel"
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap011207.html

"A Sirius Leonid Meteor 
Credit & Copyright: Wally Pacholka"
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap991118.html

"Hale Bopp and Orion
Credit and Copyright: Dewey Vanderhoff"
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap970429.html


I believe that we have finally obtained a definitive Answer as to what
it was you saw from Whitstable at 10:00pm the evening of March 14.


I hope that this has not only provided you with an Answer for your
curiosity, but that you have learned of some excellent Resources to
which to turn the next time that you see something intriquing in the
sky.

Again, before Rating my Answer, if you have any questions about this 
information, please post a Request for Clarification, and I will be 
glad to see what I can do for you. 

Regards, 
 
aceresearcher

Ladies and gentlemen. I'm closing this one as Sirius has won by a
short head. The info by aAce (and others) was (and is) excellent. I
thank you. Keep looking out for the next thing that bothers me. (Its
being entered if 5 mins!!) Seriously, thank you. Dave.

Could be some government experiment of some sort...

Aceresearchers answer is certainly thorough.  I would add that from
his/her data, the object you saw was almost certainly NOT Envisat
since its maximum elevation is 22 degrees, much less than the 30-40
you state, and its apparent brightness is only 5.0M - difficult to see
in all but the darkest skies.

At first blush, I guessed that what you had seen was Jupiter through a
junky atmosphere.  I would have picked Venus but it doesn't get that
far from the Sun.

Saturn seems a very credible answer.

Just incidently Aceresearcher is a  lady and a lovely one at that, yet
also obviously a gifted researcher as well.

If you download a copy of Cartes du Ciel (a great piece of freeware)
and put in the time of your original observation you'll find you were
looking at Sirius.

Ian G.

Yup - Sirius for sure.  Good one, Ian.  No excuses here - I should
have considered that.

See http://www.100megsfree4.com/farshores/ufoaint.htm for a (dated)
brief discussion of the phenomenon.

This site, http://www.fourmilab.ch/yoursky/ is also a pretty cool star
map generator.