Strange flash of light

About a month ago I witnessed a rather strange event, and I was wondering if anyone could share their thoughts and help me figure out what I saw.

It was out with a large group of guys about 30+ and we were doing some regular fraternal experiential learning exercises. The time was approx 3:00 AM PST.

During an exercise I caught a glimpse of something moving to my left, so I looked and saw a silhouette off in the distance walk across a small wooden bridge. I thought nothing of it as it could have been anybody, but pretty random at 3AM.

A few minutes later we kept hearing something in the bushes off in the distance in front of us. Again, thought nothing of it. One of my guys even went into the bushes to see if he could find who or what was making all of the noise, but he didn't find anything so we figured it was a possum or something.

At approx 3:30AM I noticed a ball of light appear above the trees in front of me. Before I could even think to yell at the guys to and tell them to look, the ball of light expanded and filled the sky above us, then contracted on itself and disappeared. The strange part about it was that there was absolutely no noise. It looked like an transformer blew up, but there was no noise and no telephone poles/electrical wires. I know the light source was very close because the daylight that this thing emitted fell off after about 50 yards from the center.

I asked the guys what they thought it was, but no one could draw a conclusion. One of my buddies and I went to the exact location of where we saw the light source only to find that we were standing in the bushes. Any thoughts, ideas, comments?

I'm not claiming to have witnessed anything extraterrestrial or of the sort, just a very strange light that I hope someone can shed some light on

I have also witnessed the same light recently. At first it seemed like a satellite, then later it became clear that it was not.

I also assumed one of the possibilities to be a satellite, but it was by far way too close. Where abouts did you witness this? I'm located in southern California.

I had this happen standing in my livingroom today at around 1pm. I was in a position that the northern windows faced me. All the sudden the brightest flash I've EVER seen hit me in the eyes....it was very large and lit up the whole outside even though it was totally daylight. There was no sound, just the flash. The flash came from outside my house somewhere to the north of us. My eyes felt a little fried from the experience and I had one of those things going on like after you've had a camera flash go off in your face when you close your eyes you see some of the scene fried into your vision. My son sitting a few feet away, facing EAST toward the television saw NOTHING!