1)Finishing-up working on my next door neighbor's truck in the front yard & saying our goodnights.2) My neighbor who was facing me said: "whoa -there's a purple beam on the hill!" At which point, myself and roomate turned to look.3) A solid purple beam of light projecting down at approximately 30 degrees onto the adjacient foothill terminating in a spotlight fashion on said hill with an approximate diameter of 30'-100' based on our approximate distance of .25 miles.4) I did not see any object -only a solid violet beam. My neighbor saw it first, then my roomate and I turned to see this beam flash on the hill for about 2 seconds. Then, we move our position to my front yard (towards hill) to get a better view. 20-30 seconds later, we saw it project another beam upwards -but in the same direction.5) Well, we were pretty blown away considering the fact that the beam on the hill was being projected from the sky, which led us to believe that there must've been some type of aerial platform from whence it was projected. Also, it was too intense and large to possibly be any kind hand-held laser. THIS WAS BIG! My guess is that this laser could be equated to a laser-type instrumet operating in the thousands of wattage range -which means it had to be big.6) All we saw was a beam -no object projecting it. We could not discern it's origin.