My wife and i were photographing the perseid meteor showers on 8/12/17 at approximately 10pm est. she had the camera facing ne toward where the showers were best viewed. i was sitting down behind her watching her set up the camera when an extremely bright light flashed in the northern night sky toward polaris. i saw this out of the corner of my eye and when i turned toward it, it was gone. i asked my wife if she saw it and she replied she didn't. it was by far the brightest light in the sky.... by far. approximately 5 minutes later i saw the extremely bright light flash on, then off again this time more to the west. i asked my wife if she saw it and again she did not. i then asked her to leave her camera and come watch with me. another 5 minutes or so passed and this time we both saw it. it was back almost due north but lower in the sky. the main difference was the light this time was not as bright as the original brilliant flash but appeared as if someone was operating a dimmer switch because the light started out faint then glowed brightly, then off. immeditaly following this sequence, a much smaller (secondary) flash would instantly occur, always to the right and lower than the initial object - possibly a side view of the object? the initial brilliant flash of light that i mentioned originally may have been a front view because we could not see the secondary flash of light when this occurred. we watched this object for well over a half hour always following the same sequence of no light to dim light, to brighter light always followed by the smaller secondary flash of light. it seemed to go back and forth from a front view with the brilliant light to a side view with the light acting as if were being operated on a dimmer switch. the secondary flash was only visible on the side view theory. when the "side view" light glowed on it appeared there actually some sort of shadow behind the light. possibly indicating an object behind the light? when the light disappeared, you couldn't see anything where the object may have been and when it reappeared with the flashing sequence it was always in a different location in the sky. initially the light started out to the north, high in the sky, then to the west at different altitudes, back to the north, then southwest until it turned to the east, flashed one more sequence then disappeared. my 21 year old son came out and got to see about 15 minutes of this event. i have been an amateur astronomer for many years. i know what planes and helicopters look like at night. i can also easily pick out satellites passing overhead so i know what they look like as well. this object was unlike anything i have ever seen. this object was very high in the sky. it followed no type of flight pattern. once it went dark you wouldn't see it again until it flashed the light in a completely different part of the sky from when we last saw it. i have never claimed to see a ufo before but this was strange enough that i felt i needed to reach out to someone else. very strange. please contact me if you would like to discuss further. my wife was able to get several pictures of this object on her camera. we viewed these pictures and you can clearly see the light and the irradic behavior of the flight of whatever this object was.