White cylindrical object with trailing haze, bigger than our plane, pilots don’t know what it is.

United Airlines flight 301. White cylindrical object with rounded nose (like a tic tac..?), appeared as we started our descent to land.  It had no discernible lights but very luminescent in the darkness, size  bigger than our plane about twice. At first I thought it was a plane on fire or some kind of test for releasing water for fighting forest fires- but the haze kept growing.  It moved across the sky with a swirling haze behind it (have pictures too) parallel to the ground towards the ocean. The event lasted for only a few minutes before it vanished above the water leaving the smoke/haze to disperse. Pilots couldn’t figure it out what it was, they called in but it was not like anything they seen before and we had a good laugh since it was such a surprise. Working as an engineer I assumed it was new technology, or a test- but it was an odd place. If it’s a new phenomena I would love to know what it was.