My partner, daughter and I were out in the yard doing some cleanup of leaves. We were all standing and talking in the driveway when I looked behind the 2 and up into the sky. I saw a huge, white, glowing object in the sky with a misty, white tail trailing behind it. My first thought was that is odd, planes don't have a short vapor trail, it should be longer. I also realized it was making no sound. I called attention to it by telling the other 2 to look, look at that. Is that a comet? Would we see a comet in the daylight? It was 5:23 in the `evening. It was clear, sunny and cloudless Oct 12,2014. We all began to watch it as it went from SW to SE toward the ocean. It crossed across the face of the sun and we thought we'd lost sight of it. It had not disappeared.It stopped and hovered for about 15-30 seconds then resumed moving across the sky, lowering toward the ocean as it went. We watched until it went out of sight due to trees that were in the way. We were excited thinking oh this is Haley's comet. My partner kept saying, no that is a UFO, I just know it.The object seemed to flutter a bit and fly, then hover and fly. Some of it's flight was quick, some quite slow as it arced closer toward the water. `IN the sky it appeared to be larger than a basketball with what, from the ground, would have been about a 4 inch tail.We came indoors and about 15 minutes later we heard several large helicopters fly over the house in the direction of Searsport Maine and the water. Penobscot Bay. We live in a town next to Searsport, about a 1/3 mile away from the bay.