around midnight on september 13, 2016 my father-in-law, wife, and myself were standing outside of my in-laws house in a small town of about 400. there was no moon, no cloudy overcast, and the winds were calm. as i turned to walk towards my car, i noticed a bright light at about 20 degrees above the horizon. this would not be unusual where we were at because we live close to an international airport and are accustomed to seeing landing lights from aircraft entering and departing various traffic patterns. however, this light appeared to be stationary with no external navigational lights. it also appeared to be whiter than most of the aircraft normally look. my family also noticed the light. approx. 1-2 minutes later the light dimmed from very bright to about the same quality as a star. it than began a near vertical ascent directly over our heads in what i would estimate was less than 10 seconds, where it was joined by two other objects of the same size and light quality. the three objects were performing various maneuvers including tight circles, abrupt direction changes, and straight line flight. the three objects became dimmer and dimmer as they tracked from directly overhead to the southwest where we lost sight of them. i had one similar incident approx. 1-2 weeks before that i dismissed to some unknown anomaly. the first incident occurred exactly the same way but there was only one object total that was observed. it was also in the direction of the airport along a flight path used for aircraft approach. however, it was again a very bright light similar to landing lights that went vertically to directly overhead. i have also previously noticed an object with star like size and light quality that tracks from south to north crossing 3/4 of the sky in approx 20 seconds or less. i have attempted to research any satellites overhead on various satellite tracking website but have had no success find an object that passes overhead at that specific date and time.