After 2 a.m. in the east - southeast sky, there is a ridiculously bright planet. Is it Venus or Jupiter?
Venus
Thx. Should have known, it’s ALWAYS Venus.
As an aside - if you have a modern phone the skymap apps you can get are very good. Handy for identifying stuff when you’re out and there’s a clear night sky.
I keep meaning to show my young son the international space station when it flies over but it seems to do so in the wee hours where I am.
Are you sure? As in, did you check a sky chart? Jupiter is also very bright, and Venus isn’t usually visible at 2AM.
Not always, Jupiter is also brighter than any star.
Found your location in your profile, and generated a sky chart. I think you are looking at Jupiter, as Venus doesn’t rise until 3:16. Is it high in the sky, or near the horizon?
Right now, if it’s the high (~40 degrees alt) bright (-2.3) object just a little south of due east, it’s Jupiter. Venus doesn’t rise until 3am.
Is there one in particular you’d recommend? For IPhone. Thanks!
Then it might be Jupiter? It’s about midway between the horizon and overhead, in the early hours between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m. I thought it was Jupiter. There is no other bright planet near it as far as I can tell. This one is really really big and bright.
Venus is always close to the sun. You’re never going to see it at 2AM except in times and places where the sun rises before 4 or so.
It’s definitely Jupiter then. It’s in the constellation Taurus if you can make that out.
This also proves astrology works. When Jupiter is in Taurus, the first response you’ll get to any GQ question will be bull.
Venus is usually close to the Sun, because it’s orbit is within that of Earth’s. However, the maximum angle between Venus and the Sun is about 45 degrees, so it can sometimes be seen up to 3 hours after sunset or 3 hours before sunrise (provided I’ve got my maths right).
updated each week
other resources on their site are very helpful also (look for their interactive sky chart)
Sounds about right to me. I didn’t do any of the research required to give a precise answer. 
I use Google Sky Map and love it, but I have an Android so I don’t know if it’s available on an iPhone. If it is I’d recommend it.
It isn’t. 
Ah, bummer.
Not sure how it is on iPhone, but on our iPad, I like GoSkyWatch Planetarium. It uses your device’s accelerometers and positioning sensors to detect where and what angle you’re holding it. So, you basically hold your device up, point it at what you want to identify in the sky, and it tells you what it is.
On Android, Google Sky Map does pretty much the same thing.
Yep. But you won’t see it at 2 a.m, which is really 1 a.m. by the Sun, thanks to daylight saving - in other words, about an hour from solar midnight. I saw Jupiter through my bedroom window a week or two back round about the time of night the OP mentions and I was struck by how bright it was - but then, if it’s opposite the Sun or thereabouts then (a) it’s more or less as near to us as it gets, although its brightness is far less sensitive to this than Mars’s, and (b) it’s in as dark a sky as it can be, and will look all the brighter by contrast.
Jupiter tends to looks faintly yellow-white, whereas Venus looks almost blue-white to me.
I use the free version of Distant Suns on my iPhone. The paid version has a lot more features built into it that probably help if you are a complete astronomy newbie (like updating the screen based on which direction you are facing and such).
If you’ve ever seen Jupiter and Venus together, it’s pretty obvious which one is brighter. And you’re not even seeing all of Venus!