The Pedra Menina UFO video has a Starlink problem

On a January night in Brazil's Caparaó mountains, photographer André Berlinck pointed a camera at a dark ridge and filmed 26 minutes of moving lights.

The clip had more going for it than the usual phone flash: a named photographer, a fixed landscape, a long run time, and a sky that could be checked. A Metabunk reconstruction now puts much of the motion in ordinary sky traffic: Starlink objects and Qatar Airways flight QR774.

Berlinck shot the sequence on January 10 and 11, 2026, from above the village of Pedra Menina, in Espírito Santo, near the Minas Gerais border. The video spread on YouTube and Brazilian social media.

Berlinck is a professional photographer with more than 30 years of experience who, in comments quoted in a Metabunk thread, said he regularly shoots night skies and timelapses and knows what ordinary satellites look like.

What the clip actually showed

The useful part was not just the lights. It was the setup. The camera was parked on a known ridge inside Caparaó National Park, looking across a recognizable landscape.

The frame had a clean sky, a stable foreground, and a working star field. That gave analysts a horizon, a direction, and enough screen time to compare the moving lights with known satellites and aircraft.

What Metabunk did

A thread on Mick West's Metabunk forum used the ridge, the star field, and regional flight traffic as anchors. Users narrowed the likely camera position, compared the view direction, and ran the footage through Sitrec, the forum's reconstruction tool, to test whether known satellites and aircraft fit the moving lights.

West identified the lights as matching Starlink objects, with the caveat that exact timing and location make the reconstruction fiddly.

Two matches held up. The first was at the 26-minute mark, where Qatar Airways flight QR774 crossed the scene alongside two Starlink satellites. The second was a cluster of lights at the 15-minute mark, matched to Starlink objects on January 11.

Why it matters

This is the kind of UFO clip that can actually be worked.

Berlinck's camera work is more disciplined than the average viral sighting. The landscape is identifiable. The sky gives a working star field. The Metabunk pass comes with a real flight number and a real satellite stack.

For a clip that started as lights over the Caparaó ridge, the trail ends with QR774 and a Starlink train.

Sources

• André Berlinck YouTube video from Pedra Menina / Caparaó, posted January 2026.
• Metabunk thread: "Brazilian photographer films dozens of UFOs", started January 13, 2026.
• Sitrec, used in the Metabunk thread for satellite and aircraft reconstruction.