“Sadeem Al-Jinan”... Through the Lenses of Gulf Media

Three Gulf astrophotographers from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar have produced a detailed image of the “Embryo Nebula,” compiling 441 exposures that required a total of 36 hours and 45 minutes of work.

The project involved Ali Al-Obaidli from Kuwait, Bakri Abdullah from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and Rabie Al-Kuwari from Qatar.

Al-Obaidli explained via his Instagram account that the imaging data was collected from Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, while Al-Kuwari handled the majority of the final processing work. “Thank God, we produced an image worthy of the precious Gulf sky,” he said.

Al-Obaidli noted that he captured his data from the Al-Salmi desert in Kuwait during the nights of October 16 and 17, 2025, using an “Ascar 140” telescope. Meanwhile, Abdullah captured additional data from Muzahiriyyah in the Makkah region of Saudi Arabia during the nights of October 17 and 18 of the same month, using an “Ascar SQA 85” telescope. He pointed out that the total combined exposure time amounted to 36 hours and 45 minutes, distributed across 441 frames.

He clarified that most of the blue color visible in the image results from starlight scattered by dust grains, rather than from self-luminous gas. The small red spots hidden within the dark lanes are Herbig-Haro objects, which are regions where jets from newborn stars collide with the surrounding cloud.

He added that the “NGC 1333” nebula, nicknamed the “Embryo Nebula,” is located approximately 1,000 light-years away in the constellation Perseus, within the Perseus Molecular Cloud. It is one of the most active regions for the birth of new stars.