Strange lights in the Feilding skies have puzzled some residents and left them wondering what extraterrestrials might want with their friendly town.

Feilding woman Carol, who did not wish to use her surname, and her partner saw four lights moving slowly across the sky, from west to east, outside their home about 9.30pm last Friday night.

She said the most peculiar thing was that the lights were stacked one above the other, before separating and changing direction.

"I've never seen anything like it before. It wasn't a plane and I've seen Chinese lanterns before, it wasn't them either," Carol said.

"They all just followed the same path."

She raced to get her camera, taking a short video clip and some pictures. When she zoomed in on the photos on her computer, what she saw shocked her.

"It honestly looks like a spaceship. It was a light in the middle, with little lights in a ring around it. It blew my mind when we blew it up and saw what we saw."

Carol said neither her nor her partner were drinking, smoking and were not on any medication.

"We just want to know what it was and if anyone else saw them. I do feel a bit silly but I do believe out there possibly in our huge universe there is something, somewhere."

But did that something from somewhere visit Feilding on Friday night? Some experts have some possible explanations. A Defence Force spokeswoman said helicopters based at Ohakea could be responsible for the mysterious movements.

"While I can't definitively say what may or may not have been seen by members of the public in the skies over Feilding, I can definitely advise that our NH90 helicopters are carrying out a sustained period of night flying at the moment.

"These aircraft sport a number of different coloured lights at different times (for example, white, red, green), and are capable of slow movement in the hover and relatively quick changes of direction."

Palmerston North Astronomical Society president Jeremy Moss thinks the lights may have belonged to Russian satellites.

"At that time, there were about six satellites passing overhead that were easily visible to the naked eye; four of these were travelling from west to east," Moss said.

"As satellites orbit Earth, they can catch the sunlight for several minutes at a time, until they pass into Earth's shadow. If satellites are in similar orbits, they'll appear to cross the sky together, and it can look like they're flying in formation, even though they are not. Some satellites will become very bright for a few seconds, as one of their antenna catch the light.

"So it looks like [Carol] saw three artificial satellites which had very similar orbits, probably of the Russian COSMOS fleet of satellites."

An Auckland Stardome astronomer said from the photos and description it was unlikely to be astronomical, but with the Chinese New Year on Thursday it was possible these lights were Chinese lanterns.