So I was outside tonight filming the fireworks, when I noticed strange orange lights in the sky, and no they were not fireworks.  There were about a dozen or so in the span of around 20 minutes, they came from the North West, South, and East, all went in a roughly North East direction toward Selfridges.  I'm in Eastpointe (First suburb North of Detroit, and one suburd away from Lake St. Clair).

The lights lasted for several minutes each before disapearing as abruptly as they appeared, and seemed to start fairly low to the ground, and very slowly gain altitude, they moved very much like planes, and at roughly the same speed, but I've never seen running lights that were just a single orange light, plus even when they were fairly low, and close, I saw nothing they were attached to.  In appearance they looked sort of like airial flares, but I saw no illuminated smoke, and I've never seen a flare move all the way across the sky, and gain altitude.

When viewed fully zoomed through my admittedly poor cell phone camera, which is what I was using they seemed to sort of flicker, or shimmer, and may have actually been clusters of lights.  When viewed by the naked eye when low, and closer they seemed to have a slight halo.

This is not the first time I have seen these, but it's usually just 1, or 2, not 10+, but the ones out of the North West did appear in the same place, and travel in the same direction as before though.

So was Selfridges doing something tonight?

What were these things?  I assume some kind of plane, but I've never seen anything like it.

Check it out or report it.

http://www.mufon.com/

I'm not saying it's aliens.............................But.................

Sky lanterns.

May be a paper lantern - I saw quite a few this evening.  From the right angle they appear to be moving faster than they are.

ETA: beaten.

Yep, Chinese lanterns.

We usually buy a bunch but we wait a few months before we light them and people forget about fireworks and all they can think about is UFO's.

What I was going to say

It's a dikfer.

Yup paper lanterns, Big thing over at the clawson fireworks tonight too.

I saw a pretty bright meteor breaking up tonight around 10:00.  

I haven't been outside much tonight but I have seen these strange lights before, albeit in pretty much the exact opposite direction that you describe.

I'm about 5 miles NW of Selfridge and I usually see these lights, 2 or 3 at a time, in a SSW direction typically hovering or making slow turns. I just figured they were jets in a landing pattern, not sure if there is an airport in that general direction though.

Airplanes cruising at 35,000 feet, 230* miles away,  catching the sunset.

This would freak someone out if they were a few miles off.

Especially in Poland.

"Someone's invading!"

This

I wonder if this has anything to do with the days getting shorter. I've been checking, and today was a couple minutes shorter than yesterday. Really fucking strange, bro.

I saw a few tonight
when ever I do I hope they maintain structural integrity until the flame goes out so that the candle doesn't land on a house while still burning

Yep. Exactly what it was.  I saw several tonight.