Several round objects in a straight line formation

The unknown objects in this formation were round dim-orange things, like cooling molten steel, ghostly looking, not transparent though.  There was this somewhat fluttery haze around these objects' paremiters.   Each was the size of if you held a penny out at arms length.  I can't tell you for certain there were 7 objects, but I recall -around- that number.  They were in a straight-line formation, but side-by-side abreast, closeley, not single file.  They were seperate and not lights on something, because you could see the sky inbetween each one.  They came flying directly over me and my friend, coming from West and heading East.  Silent.  They seemed to me, about as high and fast as a sort of low small plane.
I was a 19 yrold female HS grad, working manual labor factory miscellaneous and living with parents and siblings at that time.  My friend was a few short years older, female, living with one parent, doing miscellaneous print-shop work.  We were sitting outside across the street from her house, on wooden bleechers in a sports field of a school, and it was dark there.  We had a "boom box" audio cassette/radio player, and acting generally silly.  The neighborhood was a quiet one with rarely to any criminal behaviour about.  That I knew of.
The weather that night was warm but not very warm.  No inclement weather.  I recall the sky mostly clear, the stars mostly visible, for a residential neighborhood of a medium city in 1979.
Witness indicates that the date of the sighting is approximate.  PD