Tight ly grouped string of lights/object?

I let my dog out at 1:50a or so, maybe 1:45a. Clear skies, bright stars visible. I looked up to the east and saw a string of bright white lights slowly passing by. The length of this was about as long as my index finger, extended to arms length.
 I had binoculars and my cell phone just inside the door, so I looked at the lights through the binoculars. Crystal clear lights, straight line, very close together.
 They were as bright as the stars and made no sound. A few in the line were not "turned on", making a break in the line, but there were about 35 all together.
 As I was trying to turn on my cell phone camera, the lights had moved out of view, hidden by the fir trees in my backyard.
 I saw on a youtube channel that a few other people within 50 miles of me saw this too. One man described it as "The Empire State Building laying on it's side". He felt it was a solid object from his angle, and he used binoculars, too. I think of it as a string of lights.