stars or satellites change places in the sky.

I was taking an astronomy class circa 1977-1978 and I believe this was late at night, looking for constellations, winter semester.  I was looking out the window of my house approximately WSW and trying to figure out a "triangle" of stars I was looking at, approximately the same size as the "Summer Triangle" with Deneb, etc.  As I was observing it, the single star at the top of the triangle moved slowly down to the lower left "corner" star and seemed to stop.  Then it (or the corner star) moved across the sky to the other bottom corner star on the right and stopped.  I was so astounded that I sat and watched it for about another half hour, waiting to see if anything else happened but no other movement occurred there.  Meanwhile, way off to the west on the horizon, low in the sky - a silent red light was moving back and forth something like a helicopter might do if looking for something, but there was no noise at all.  I had the w! indow open, despite the time of year just to check.  Was too close to the tree line tho, couldn't see it after a while and gave up.
Witness indicates that the date of the sighting is approximate.  PD