Published: 9:51 AM 3/2/2010

Pennsylvania - 02-06-10

I was shoveling my deck with a friend after the big Mid-Atlantic snow storm on February 6th. While shoveling, I happened to look up and saw 2 bright lights, approximately one finger width apart.

My initial thought was, “Those planes are close or going to hit each other.”

A few seconds after I saw the lights, I quickly asked my friend to check the objects out. At this point we are both observing the two lights. I love astronomy and know star / planet positions very well- the 2 lights were in the northeast from my position, and planets would never be in this part of the sky.

The details: the lights were the magnitude of Venus, very bright, a steady light (like a planet looks, no twinkles like a star).

In fact, it looked like 2 Venuses in the northeast sky at 8 PM Eastern Time USA. I held my hand up to see if the lights were moving; I thought maybe they were flares. There was no movement.

I was in the military and know how flares move. The lights were 45 degrees from each other; the one right was higher, left lower.

My friend and I kept observing, asking “what the heck is that?” for about 2 minutes. Then the light on the bottom left winked out slowly, and 2 seconds later, the one on the right winked out.

There was no movement across the sky; it looked like they were moving away from our viewing position, or disappearing. There were no more sightings after that.

More info- I live in an area where you see the commercial planes flying west out of Philadelphia. While we were observing the 2 objects, they disappeared while a plane flying out of Philadelphia came between us and our viewing position of the objects. Using the plane as an altitude reference, the lights were higher.