What Were the Two Bright Yellow Lights in the Sky on July 10th?

[Aero51]

I am by no means an astronomer and have no experience whatsoever with astronomy. On the night of July 9th (well it was really 3:30AM on July 10th) I was going to the bathroom and I noticed two very bright yellow lights out in the sky (one slightly brighter than the other). They were easily 20x brighter than the 2nd brightest star in the sky, so much so that I could capture them clearly with my Droid RAZR cell phone camera. I am guessing that these were planets because they were quite large. In addition I tried to get a better look with a pain of high powered binoculars only to hurt my eyes a bit.

To give you an idea of my location I have coordinates and the direction I was facing.


41.7003° N, 73.9214° W, looking Eastward.

Thanks

 

[Bobbywhy]

Aero51, I suggest you can find the objects (planets, I'm fairly sure) that you saw if you download the Stellarium free program. Once you download it, you simply input your coordinates. Then you can see your skies in real time!

http://www.stellarium.org/

 

[Drakkith]

The only possible things I can think of that they could be are Jupiter and Venus. Both rise in the East early in the morning this time of the year, Jupiter at about 1:30 am and Venus at about 2:10 am, and both are brighter than -2 magnitude, which is several times brighter than Vega which is dimmer with 0.03 magnitude. (Lower numbers are brighter)

 

[russ_watters]

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/scienc.../moon-venus-jupiter-celestial-show/56213858/1

 

[Aero51]

Awsome russ, the picture posted in the article is nearly identical to what I saw, thanks.