Wed evening 12/22/2010 somewhere between 6pm and 7pm - went outside to see why my dog was barking and having a fit; noticed a really bright object through the tree line moving from South to North; we live in a rural area, with very little low flying air trafic, especially after dark. It is very unusual to see something that low and that bright in the sky in this area. At first I thougt it may be the Life Flight helicopter landing - but there was no noise, and my dog was barking at it - he has never barked at Life Flight when it has flown over before. This bright light was moving very slow and was very bright white;no other colors were visable. I kept my eye on it, as I started walking down the driveway to get past the trees to get a good look at it. It was low, could not have been any higher than 2 or 3 thousand feet, maybe the height of a radio transmitter tower. As I was getting even with the tree line, the object started to make a slow arching turn towards the East, and began to speed up. When I cleard the trees and was standing in the open pasture, the object was gaining altitude; then suddenly accelerated to the East and was out of sight in less than a second - with absolutley no noise. Struck me as wierd; I have seen things in the sky before - but for some reason - this bugged me. I have told my husband (who arrived home about 20 minutes after the sighting) about this - but have not told anyone else. I keep a camera handy - but did not take it with me, because I was just going out to find out why my dog was barking - not expecting to see something.