My wife and I were sitting on our porch looking out at the lake when I noticed what first appeared to be a low altitude airplane with a huge orange glow to the middle of the object. We got the binoculars because it appeared to be on fire. Upon further inspection it looked like a disk or oval shaped object with an orange fireball around its' mid-section. It wasn't the typical flame that trails an object losing altitude, rather this object gained altitude fairly quickly and the fireball seemed to surround the object in a HUGE spike-like fashion. My wife believes she saw a pulsating white light, however I did not witness this. There was absolutely no noise involved. The object over the course of the next minute or so continued to gain altitude until we lost sight of it behind the clouds. We wondered if this could possibly be some type of missle but quickly dismissed that idea. All we know is this was not any type of aircraft we're familiar with. We're still completely in awe of the whole event.