A friend and I were outside on their front lawn, enjoying an evening of sky watching, looking for satellites and shooting stars. It was a perfectly clear night, no cloud cover at all, and the parking lot lights from the local business parks behind and in front of their home had just been turned off (the timers are set for midnight). The stars immediately became more visible and even the Milky Way began to show after a few minutes. While sitting in my camp chair with my head tilted back, staring up, I noticed 4 pale lights of equal magnitude, no brighter (but slightly larger) than the surrounding stars moving North to South, directly overhead, and cruising fairly quickly. It covered its own apparent diameter approximately 5 times in a second. 3 of the lights were in a perfect triangle, with the 4th light exactly in the middle. The lights did not blink, waver or change colors. I immediately pointed them out to my friend, exclaiming: "What the F**K is that?!? What IS that!?" My first fleeting impression was a low flying jet, but it made no sound at all and the lights were not in any formation I had ever witnessed before. We stared at them as they passed perfectly silently overhead and continued in a straight line due South. The lights (or object, as I believe it was) appeared to be very low, only a couple of thousand feet above, much lower and closer than any other aircraft (with the exception of a probable police helicopter) we had seen that day or night, before or after this sighting. A few aircraft had been visible that night (none directly overhead) including 3 very loud military helicopters in a strung-out formation earlier in the afternoon heading south, though far to the East, low on the horizon. What was likely a police helicopter passed low, loud and close by a few minutes after the sighting, just south of us and heading due East. My estimation of the object's altitude is based on the respective angle of the lights, which quickly became foreshortened as it passed overhead. The lights were only visible for 6-8 seconds, and became dimmer as they got closer to the treeline on the horizon. Before they even came close to the tops of the trees, they quickly dimmed and then disappeared completely. Every other conventional aircraft I have ever seen flying has very bright white and red strobe lights that are visible from miles away, at any angle, and sometimes even during daylight hours. This object had nothing resembling conventional aircraft lighting. I have been an aviation enthusiast since I was a child, and have often watched aircraft of all sorts flying at all hours. This was nothing like anything I have ever seen before. It gave me chills of excitement; I knew we had just witnessed something very high-tech, stealthy and rare. A true UFO in the strictest definition.