Out on the usual night hike in to some nearby BLM land for star gazing my friend and I noticed a bright light pass just above us, it dimmed out briefly just a one time. We thought nothing of it, at first I thought it was a bright satellite. Using his smartphone my friend used an app to see if it was the space station or some other satellite. It was not, and then it went through the clouds and we could see beams of light emitting in all directions on and through the clouds also casting shadows in the clouds. It was obvious me us then that it was not that high in elevation. It was moving quite fast. Much faster than the planes around it. We then stopped to observe a jetliner flying south east on the other side of the sky at the same elevation as the clouds to compare the two. They were nothing a like. We definitely heard the jetliner, we could easily make out the multitude of aircraft lights, the bright light traveling NE was one bright white light and made no sound.