I was sitting on my back porch smoking a cigarette, and this flashing light caught my eye. I thought it was a shooting star or an airplane, but it was flying too high to be a plane and shooting stars don't hover or change direction. It became a little more visible and I could make out an oval shape. It was moving towards to east at a moderate pace, stopped and hovered for about a minute, and then started heading north east. I was feeling kind of bewildered and amazed because I knew what I had seen. I couldn't do anything but stare at it until it started moving a little faster. I saw a really bright flash of light, brighter than the random occasional flashes it had been omitting. After the flash, it just shot straight up into the sky and disappeared.