Large orange ball of light moving slowly across sky.

I can't remember exactly what day or exact time. It was about 3 to 4 miles N/W of town. This probably wasn't a ufo, but I just got to a friend's house and I was talking to a girl outside before I went inside. As I was talking to her I noticed a very large circular orange light to the east at about 40 degrees maybe. The size of it seemed maybe like you would hold a basketball about 6 to 8 feet from you, if that helps at all? It didn't make any noise at all. As far as I could tell it was moving to the north very slowly. After looking at it in awe, I told the girl to look, when I looked back at it, it just went out(disappeared). Well she didn't get to see it. For some reason I didn't make much of a deal about it at the time. Someone told me it was probably St. Elmo's Fire. Maybe you could tell me.
Date is approximate.  PD