Bright round light, getting smaller then larger, sometimes with a red light within it

We were driving north on route 81 towards Whitney Point and stopped to get gas and noticed an unusually bright white light low in the horizon.  It seemed to get brighter and bigger and then fade to smaller, this occured a few times. 
The sky was clear that evening.
We proceeded to drive to Ithaca and watched the light and while coming out of Richford, on route 79, we pulled over twice to watch the light.  It appeared to move slightly at times and sometimes a red light was noticed to be within the white light, near to the bottom.
A couple other cars had pulled over periodically to look at the light. 
We watched it until we got to Ithaca and it was odd that it moved higher in the horizon and then lower. 
The last time I saw this was around 1900 and it was then very low on the western hemisphere.
Given the long duration of the sighting, we wonder whether the object might have been a celestial body, a star or planet.  PD