On 9/29/2012, I was standing in my back yard in Highland Park IL at around 11pm Central time. I immediately noticed 3 bright white round lights in the North sky, just over my tree line. I noticed it was hovering and was not moving. Object looked very large, and there was no sound. I am a sky watcher, and I live near O'hare international. I knew within 1 second, that it was not an airplane. I watched it for 60 seconds, and then I went inside for my binoculars that were within arms reach inside the house. I returned about 5-10 seconds later, and the object was still there. I took a look with the binoculars, and I could see a solid object, metallic looking, maybe grey. It was a full moon and you could see that there was definitely something there with the lights. With the binoculars, I could see that there was something flashing in the center. Another light but this was one red, and was strobing fast in the center. This can also be seen with the naked eye later. I observed for another 30 seconds or so with the binoculars, and now at this time I started to hear what sounded like 2 helicopters heading towards that direction. They were not news helicopters. These helicopters sounded loud and powerful. I never saw a helicopter, but it was clear that they were heading from the east towards the west, towards the object that I was viewing in the north. At this point, I felt that I needed to get this on video and ran inside the house to get my cell phone camera. This took no longer than 15 seconds, but when I returned, the object was gone. I am not sure if I heard the helicopters anymore at this time, or maybe they were fading off in the distance, or it could have been an oversight from my shock at that time. I searched the night sky in the back and front yards for the next hour, but the object did not return.