Strange luminous ‘rods’ have been caught on camera in the skies over several South American countries in the past month, DailyMail.com can reveal.
The long white and blue objects appeared to slowly float across the sky in videos filmed by residents of Argentina, Chile and Brazil.
One stunning example was filmed on April 29 by UFO researcher and Petrobras engineer Rony Vernet on cameras he set up to monitor the southeastern night sky near Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
An apparent cylindrical object glides into the frame at 5.01am, heading northeast and gradually moving out of sight over about 80 seconds.
On May 6 a witness in Argentina filming with their phone captured a similar-looking white object moving slowly through the sky above their house.
The same day, at 7.14pm in Vina del Mar, Chile, a third witness videoed another incident, though this time the cylinder appeared blue.
Another video obtained by Vernet came from a Chilean witness in Luján de Cuyo the same evening.
On May 8, residents of a Brazilian town near the border with Uruguay filmed one that appeared to change color from white to blue and yellow.
Vernet shared videos he collected from four witnesses in Brazil on May 9, showing similar objects.
But experts are baffled as to whether the objects are indeed UFOs or the satellite constellation Starlink.
Often a string of lights about as bright as stars, moving slowly across the sky, will be mistaken for a true UFO when it is in fact Starlink, the network of satellites launched by Elon Musk’s company SpaceX.
But usually those lights will appear as distinct dots in a line, rather than a solid cylinder, and will not appear to change color.
Chris Spitzer, an expert in UFO analysis, told DailyMail.com that although Starlink generally appears as a trail of distinct dots in the sky once it is fully deployed, during its ascent it can appear as a solid line due to the satellites being grouped close together.
‘Starlink sats may look like oblong objects right after deployment when they reach Earth orbit because they are stacked together,’ he said.
Spitzer shared a likely example: a stunning photograph taken by a Fedex pilot of a meteor burning up in the atmosphere, with a white blob below it resembling the objects captured by Vernet and the other witnesses he gathered.
The white, bright nature of the objects could be just reflected sunlight, Spitzer explained.
‘Starlink satellites also generate UFO sightings right after they are deployed, when they reflect sunlight. They are released in one batch with two clamps parallel to each other where they are stacked together. This could explain some recent sightings,’ he said.
On May 6, the same day as the Argentina and Chile sightings, a Starlink satellite was launched from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 6.14pm local time.
On May 8 at 6.42pm another launched from the John F Kennedy Space Center on Merritt Island, Florida, the same day as the sighting on the Uruguay border.
There was no Starlink launch on April 29 when Vernet captured his video, but there was a launch from Cape Canaveral at 9.50pm the previous evening.
‘One video is from one of my cameras at a hot spot here in Rio,’ Vernet told DailyMail.com. ‘In May these big luminous rods started to appear in Argentina, Uruguay and South of Brazil. I have many videos people sent me.
‘The only explanation for me would be Starlink, but no satellite train was visible at the time of the sighting.’
Vernet, who works as an electronics and computer engineer at Brazilian oil firm Petrobras, is a prominent UFO researcher in Brazil and the founder of UAPBrazil.com.
