I was taking my dogs out at aproximately 8:00 p.m. CST. I was standing on the south side (uncovered) porch of mf my house. I always look up at the sky every night and do a little stargazing. I was outside for a few minutes before I looked up at the west/southwest sky. At 8:05 p.m. CST, I noticed what appeared to be a very bright "yellowish" star that I have never noticed before but it appeared to be moving very slowly north. There was a light breeze that was making the tree limbs move a liitle so I held up my right index finger as a reference to see if it was an optical illusion. The object actually was moving very slowly to the north. I watched this object for about one minute before the acceleration.There were no blinking lights that would identify this as an airplane. I actually counted three airplanes in the sky after this happened. It was just an extremely bright yellowish sphere shaped object that was moving slowly to the north. All of the sudden the object accelerated "extremely fast" and travelled north for about 1 to 1.5 seconds. I cannot even estimate how far this object may have travelled at this speed but from the point it accelerated to the point it stopped (I held my tape measure up to the sky starting from the tree that was in the horizon when it started, to the tree in the horizon where it stopped) it was three feet and two inches on my tape measure. The object then decelerated "extremely fast", stopped and disappeared.I have never seen anything like this in my life and my jaw was left hanging open. This was an amazing sight to behold, wether it was a government craft or a craft of extraterrestrial origin. Unfortunately I did not have my video-camera with me to record this. After witnessing what I did tonight I can assure you whenever I go out from now on I will have my video-camera.