white light over Alexandria at night grew in intensity-took three pictures

As near as I can tell from the position of the images on my roll of film, it was sometime soon after my daughter's birth (Feb. 12, 1979) - at the end of the roll are pictures I took on a visit to Colorado in March 1979, so it was sometime between February and March of 1979.  I had looked out our bedroom window towards the East, and saw an unusual light which appeared to be beyond the Masonic Temple, perhaps over the Potomac River, which we could see from our window about 3 miles away.  It grew in intensity as I watched it as can be seen in the three images. From one of the images it appears it could have been lighting up the foreground, that is, the trees next door, but I the exact position is hard to judge. I don't recall how the sighting ended or much else about it.  I took three pictures of it with my Nikon F2 - I had kept it loaded with film because I had been taking quite a few pictures of my newborn daughter.  My daughter had been born at home in a snow storm, and it snowed heavily that week she was born.  I remember it was a hazy night when this light appeared.  The Masonic Temple was lighted up as can be seen in the pictures.  Recently (2007) I was going through old pictures to digitize and came upon the images again.  If I can figure out how to, I will upload them here.  The sighting caught me at a time when I had a newborn child at home as was not getting all that much sleep, so how it affected me may not be relevant.  However, it did seem to enhance my feelings of well-being about existence at the time.
Witness indicates that the date of the incident is approximate.  PD