Light patch in the night sky
I am so sorry for being ambiguous. I'm not an astronomer and have have never actually even bothered to look at the sky before. I don't have a telescope nor camera.
Yet, I'm really really curious about what it is I saw in the sky tonight.
Towards, the east I first noticed a "constellation" the looked much like what is described to be the big dipper (It is possible that it could have been Andromeda and Pegasus). It was squarish and had somewhat of a ladle towards it's north eastern corner. The most distinguishable feature of the structure was that it had 3 stars in a straight line. It was the straightest line in the entire night sky.
About a hand's length to the west was another "constellation", my guts said it's name was Orion. Again, I have never seen, let alone distinguished, a constellation properly in my life. It was like a triangle with it's nose pointing towards the east. The sides that converged to the nose seemed to extend a bit backwards like antennas.
And to the west (a few inches north to the Orion was this strange glow. 758
At first I thought it was my eyes playing tricks on me as sometimes whenever you stare into light bulb or some other light source, a faint glow in that area of your vision often persists. And as I looked directly at it, it slowly faded away into darkness and all that was distinguishable was an extremely tiny star or two. But whenever I looked to something near it (like a tree or constellation) , the patch reappeared. Then, I noticed that there was cluster of tiny little stars. I couldn't make out much. What caused that light patch? It seemed to glow in and out like it was breathing. I am sure that my eyes weren't playing tricks on me because even as I turned around and tilted my head and jumped up and down in the process, the patch remained in the same spot in the sky.
The location which I observed this is from Ernakulam, Kerala, India. The nearest current sky map I could find is the following from Chennai (which is really far away):
I can't make head or tail of it. Please help and no I'm not crazy. I know it sounds like one of those crazy UFO stories but I assure you it's not.
Is there anything like what I've said observed in the night sky before? 758