MELBOURNE: A man claims to have captured footage of a UFO hovering across the city skyline here.

The three-minute clip was recorded as the UFO (unidentified flying object), hovered over Carlton Gardens on Saturday night.

Tod, who did not want his surname published, said he captured the footage on his phone after he first saw the object about 9.30 pm (local time), the Herald Sun reported.

Other witnesses have reported seeing it early in the evening. Tod said the object left the Carlton Gardens area about 11 pm (local time), flying past the Immigration Museum.

"It was moving like no other flying object that I'm aware exists, and it was displaying amazing patterns of lights that looked something like a light show display in the sky," he said.

"I was on Lygon St when I first saw it then I walked up to Carlton Gardens, there were a whole bunch of other people saw it as well," he was quoted as saying by the paper.

Astronomical Society of Victoria spokesman Perry Vlahos said it was unlikely the object was anything extraordinary.

"Something that has been around that long and not seen by astronomers is probably unlikely to be anything odd," he said.

"The fact it was in the sky for that long probably indicates it was something not too unusual," he said.

"The ASV has hundreds of members - many are looking into the sky with large telescopes every clear night from various locations around the state, including Melbourne, and none of them have reported seeing anything unexpected," he added.

However, other witnesses have described seeing other UFOs in the area. Carlton resident Penny De La Soyo said she was shocked after seeing a 'weird formation' of lights from the balcony of her 9th floor apartment late in the night.

"Eight orange lights in a weird formation came up over the horizon, then their formation changed a bit, one disappeared and then others did," she said.

The sightings comes less than a week after a western suburbs man captured an eight minute video of a fast-moving disc-shaped object descending and ascending high above his Albanvale house.

The man, known only as Ivan, said a neighbour called him outside to witness the spectacle, both looking on in astonishment.

Ivan said the object lingered in the sky for around an hour and changed colour - switching between green, red and blue - and for several seconds at a time disappeared.