On Friday 15th August,2008 at Bath University campus at around 2-45 to 3 in the morning, myself and 3 colleagues were stargazing. The moon had been out earlier in the evening but was not visible later. The sky was still quite dark but completly clear and the stars were visible. I noticed what looked like a far off galaxy with a cluster of very faint tiny stars inside. It was only when this 'galaxy' moved across the sky with its 'stars' still equidistant inside it - in what seemed like a transparent elongated but dumpy blimp shape which was fatter in the middle, going at what I perceived at the time was the wrong way across the sky, for any normal worldy phenomenon. It moved across the sky silently and quite low down and was enormous in size. It floated towards us, curving across the sky away from its original direction and went directly above us all. We were all astonished, with mouths gaped open and pointing fingers in the air shouting. As it passed over us, either side of it seemed to bend in a curve over us and as I looked directly above me, I could still see its stars inside it, still equidistant; although unless of course the light was bent and I was seeing a reflection of other stars. It had a haze or glimmer of what I can only explain as like a magnetic field or the shimmer you get on a very hot road/highway with like heatwaves transparently shimmering around it. As it passed over and began to go past, I could only see it for a second or so because it was very hard to keep track of because it just blended into the early morning, but still dark sky. When I got back to my room my watch was not working. I got in touch with the BBC sky at night programme to see if anything was due over the area (star wise) to account for what we had seen and got a reply stating that they did not know of anything that it could be. They said they would like to put it in their bbc sky at night magazine and I agreed that they could. This I know sounds ridiculous, but this is exactly what happened and what I saw. When we tried to tell people about what we all saw, we were laughed at and all kinds of ridiculous things were given as possible explanations. Suffice it to say that as mature people doing research at the University of Bath, (who where not drunk either) as has been also proposed, we all saw something which shocked us. So much so that only two of us have discussed it once and the other two will not discuss it at all. It has profoundly affected myself (and I am a professional person and ex. met. police, in as much as I am constantly looking up at the sky in case it appears again. Whilst this was an astonishing thing to see, it was also extremely frightening. Therefore I would like to remain anonymous.