After a few seconds, having no dark adaption at all, I caught a fuzziness
near the zenith. After I turned the outside light off, it was even more
prominent. It's an elongated fuzzy patch in my 10x50's, brighter than any
galaxy I've seen even through my telescope. In fact, it looks to the
naked eye a bit like M31 looks in my 8" telescope.

Anyone else see this thing?

Mike, I have 2 comments:

1) Thank you for the suggestion to go out last night, without it, I may
not have (being stuck in the Chicago suburbs with typical mag 3 skies.)

2) I went out a couple hours later, about 2am to check it out, and take
my first peak at Saturn and the orion nebula. The sky's were
exceptionally clear, the best I have ever seen in the suburbs here.
Looking up, I immediatly noticed a fuzziness, which stunned me because I
had never see such a thing before naked eye.(although I have only been
looking up for the last couple months, and have yet to make it to a dark
sky site) Anyway, upon further investigation what I was seeing was the
pleides. To the naked eye, engulfed in this light pollution, it
appeared as a fuzzy. Although as soon as I pointed my widefield at it
at 11x, it was clearly the pleides. I know it seems obvious, but could
this have been what you saw?

Mark