enormous transparent cylinder/cigar shaped object w/stars(?) attached

The incident took place sometime around 2:00 a.m. in Andover, Massachusetts. I was out for the evening with a group of friends. We were warming our cars up outside of a restaurant we had spent a few hours at. I was standing outside of my car talking with some of them in another car through their windows. For some reason, I happened to look up and notice how clear the sky was. A few seconds later I either looked up again or something caught my attention. I saw this enormous "thing" that took up my entire peripheral vision. It seemed football fields in size. It was transparent except that you could somehow make out a cylindrical or cigar form (I couldn't really see the ends fully - the transparency sort of tapered off). It was rotating as it was moving across the sky (similar to a cement truck travelling down the road spinning the cement). It had (what appeared to be) stars attached to it that seemed to be evenly spaced apart, but not in any particular formation. The same size but maybe a little brighter than "normal" stars. You could tell they were attached to this "thing" because you could see them going around with the rotations of the anomaly as opposed to the typical stationary stars I could see through the object. One of my friends in the car I was standing outside of heard my exclamation and saw my expression and pulled himself out through his open window quickly to try to see what I was looking at.  He is an amateur astronomer and knows how quickly things can disappear. Without making a noise the anomaly made its way across the sky travelling quite quickly. The sighting lasted about 10-15 seconds until it was too far for us to view it any longer or disappeared. My friend and I were quite shaken after the event. He describes it as if the sky opened up. I describe it as if a piece of sky was cut out and was moving against the rest of the sky.  No alcohol was consumed that evening as many have curiously asked me.
Witness seems certain of the correct year, but is attempting to confirm the precise date.  We have arbitrarily assigned an approximate date.  PD