I was sitting on a bench in fron of my house at about 8:40 pm talking to my mother (in Idaho) on the phone. By this time it was a very clear, dark evening, no clouds, and about 8o degrees. The stars were very bright and I even mentioned to Mom about the bright sliver of moon and the very bright star Venus off to the west/northwest of home. While talking to her I then looked almost directly north and saw a very bright light about 3-4 miles north just east of a peak called Picacho Peak heading almost due south in a direction that would take it about a half to full mile just east of my house. It was a very bright, 5-8 times larger than Venus to the west, and and had no other color other than bright white. I first asumed that it must be a plane or a helicopter, because of the "Pinal Airpark" that is about 5 miles south of us. I then realized that there were no blinking lights of any kind, just a constant star-like bright white, and it was absolutely silent. Sounds carry for miles in the desert air, but there was none from this object that was approaching at about the same speed that a small private airplane would be traveling. I told my Mom that I was watching something weird and wiuld have to get my wife Chris to see it also. The light was then beginning to pass just east of the house (paralelling I-10 freeway). I rushed into the house, told my wife, and we rushed out the back of the house to the back yard and watched it pass over just east of us--all the time never blinking or making a sound. It never changed altitude, or veer east or west. It seemed to head in a direct north to south line though it actually seemed to slightly "flutter" as it moved--it wasn't totally smooth in flight which seemed strange because airplanes do travel "smoothly". My wife commented also that there were no blinking lights or any noise. I told her to rush inside to get our daughter who was in her bedroom, and while she was inside, I watched the light, all of a sudden for the next 2-3 seconds, rapidly grow smaller, though by no means less bright, untill it just blinked out entirely. It didn't go out because of disappearing in the far distance, because it was still within 1-2 miles of my house. The light just shrank in size until it was just a very bright pin-point, and then it went out. No sound was ever heard. Within about 4-5 minutes, an airplane with blinking lights flying nearly the same speed and the same southerly direction flew by, and both my wife and I could clearly hear its engine. I have no idea what we saw, but the whole time I was also talking to Mom on the phone. She got quite an earful.