I observed a brillian, white, ball of light flying at tremendous speed from West to East.On the night of December 20, 2008, my dog needed to go outside. While I was sitting in a chair on my patio the dog looked up, and I did also. Flying overhead at a tremendous speed was a brilliant, white ball of light about the circumference of a hula hoop. A basketball size would not be quite large enough. It had come from the West over my house flying East at the same height of the wispy clouds above me. I do not know how high that was. In seconds it disappeared into the distance. It was a clean, concise ball of light. No vapor, or tail, or distortion.After it had disappeared, to my right in the sky was a small plane that was flying higher than the ball of light did. In a few more minutes a commercial jet plane came over my house and it seemed to be crawling in the sky compared to the speed of the earlier ball of light. I am on the flight path of planes heading north from Bergstrom/Austin Airport, and I watch them often from my patio, and my dog is used to looking up at them. I am still in awe at the speed and the brightness of the object I saw last night.I have witnessed the shuttle followed by the International Space Station come over my back yard and neither of them showed the same speed across my sky that this object did. I was able much longer to see them cross my sight path. This is an account as accurately and truthfully as I can relate.