two friends and i were watching an amazing meteor shower on or about the 17th of july in 2001 at an apartment building in Lewiston,Id. around maybe 830pm or 9pm, but could have been as late as 10pm. ive seen many showers, and this one blew them all away, there had to be a shooting star every 30 seconds, going mostly north to the south, but there were many going south to north also, which was weird in itself. then came a bright bright shooting star from south to north but it was not as fast as the others, and it seemed to slow, when it got to its lowest point a purple "beam" came out of the bottom for a second or less hitting the ground. up to this point we hadnt said anything about the brightness or speed of the shooting star , but when the beam shot down all three of us erupted in wtf's. when the beam ceased the "light" changed direction and looked to be heading north and was climbing in altitude. it looked to be leaving. as it was getting dimmer and dimmer we saw two other lights flank both of its sides and all three got to dim to see. i would describe it as a blue/white star, 10X brighter than any star in the sky and about 5x the size of any of the stars. it looked just like a "big bright star" until the purple beam came out. that was very confusing. then by the time the other two lights flanked it it looked pretty much like any other star except for it was "leaving". after we erupted in the wtfs, the commotion cause neighbors to come out to see what the fuss was all about. it was very dim at this point and we were the only three to see it. i myself claimed it was UFO, then and now. all three of us decided that, that is what it was a, UFO. we were not %100 about the two lights that flanked it thinking that they could have been fighter jets scrambled from an airforce base 80 miles away.