Disk / cigar object hovering east of Big Bear Lake, CA

The date is approximate. A group of engineers and scientists from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory went to Big Bear Lake for a weekend trip. We had an 8 inch Celestron telescope with a 25 mm eyepiece. We were at a campground west of the lake on a rise. We viewed small aircraft landing at the airport, east of the lake. The sun was behind us and near setting as we watched. The aircraft were landing from south to north, or right to left. With the telescope we could make out the N numbers on the planes. I noticed a few clouds, but the sky was generally clear. The aircraft seemed to be landing in front of a stationary object at some distance to the east. The object was below ten degrees above the horizon. Perhaps four or five planes landed in front of this object, which could have been miles further away. Two other people viewed the object. The object was a long cigar shape. While watching, the object suddenly changed attitude, like a disk tipping and the "cigar" appearance became an oval. It then moved away from us and was gone in under a few seconds. It made the impression of a thin metallic disk, seen in profile as a cigar while stationary, and then being seen more rounded as it tipped away from us. There was no sound, lights, exhaust or other features. There were no lenticular clouds in the area or evidence of inversion layers. The temperature was about 65 degrees and there were very light winds.