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Manga Arabia Takes Part in Anime Village at Jeddah Season

Anime Village at Jeddah Season. (SPA)
Anime Village at Jeddah Season. (SPA)
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Manga Arabia Takes Part in Anime Village at Jeddah Season

Anime Village at Jeddah Season. (SPA)
Anime Village at Jeddah Season. (SPA)

The Saudi Research and Media Group's (SRMG) Manga Arabia is taking part in the Anime Village as part of Jeddah Season 2022.

Anime Village is the first of its kind and largest village in the Middle East to celebrate anime.

The village features several global exhibitions and entertainment activities that celebrate anime.

The village was inaugurated on Thursday and will remain open for six weeks.

Manga Arabia will feature alongside Japan's most renowned publishers and production houses. It boasts its own wing at the exhibition that features interactive activities for people of all ages.

Manga Arabia will offer several enrichment workshops, including story writing, the basics of illustration and manga production and Japanese language courses for beginners.

A Manga Arabia cafe has been set up and people of all ages will be able to receive copies of Manga Arabia comics.

Editor- in-Chief of Manga Arabia, Dr. Issam Amanallah Bukhary said: "Manga Arabia marked a revolution in entertainment innovation in Saudi Arabia and the Arab wold."

"It is no secret the major impact manga art, its stories and cartoons, have had on generations," he added.

"Through this project, we are hoping to empower the imagination and open broader horizons to readers so that they can take part in inspiring experiences," he remarked.

"At Manga Arabia, we believe in the important role of interacting with the reader and fans, we therefore sought to be part of the major Seasons events, such as Riyadh Season, where we achieved remarkable success through Manga Arabia Boulevard," he added.

"We are following up on this success through our exclusive presence at Anime Village at Jeddah Season," he stated.

SRMG launched Manga Arabia in August 2021 stemming from the growth in popularity of Japanese manga and anime in the region over the last two decades and the demand for localized storytelling. Manga Arabia’s imaginative Arabic content is purposeful, safe, and inspired by Arab cultural values.

Manga Arabia boasts two offerings: “Manga Arabia Kids” with content catering to the 10–15-year-old age group, and a second title targeting those 16 and above.

With the aim of stimulating and fostering the imagination and creativity of the community, Manga Arabia produces original, high-quality, and authentic content, inspired by the culture and values of the Arab region for both regional and global audiences. The project champions local creatives for original content, alongside translated content from Japanese and international partners.

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NASA Rover Observes Aurora on Mars in Visible Light for 1st Time

The first visible-light image of a green aurora on Mars (left), taken by NASA's Perseverance rover, is seen next to a comparison image showing the night sky without the aurora but featuring the Martian moon Deimos (right), in this image released by NASA on May 14, 2025. NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS/SSI/Handout via REUTERS
The first visible-light image of a green aurora on Mars (left), taken by NASA's Perseverance rover, is seen next to a comparison image showing the night sky without the aurora but featuring the Martian moon Deimos (right), in this image released by NASA on May 14, 2025. NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS/SSI/Handout via REUTERS
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NASA Rover Observes Aurora on Mars in Visible Light for 1st Time

The first visible-light image of a green aurora on Mars (left), taken by NASA's Perseverance rover, is seen next to a comparison image showing the night sky without the aurora but featuring the Martian moon Deimos (right), in this image released by NASA on May 14, 2025. NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS/SSI/Handout via REUTERS
The first visible-light image of a green aurora on Mars (left), taken by NASA's Perseverance rover, is seen next to a comparison image showing the night sky without the aurora but featuring the Martian moon Deimos (right), in this image released by NASA on May 14, 2025. NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS/SSI/Handout via REUTERS

NASA's Perseverance rover has observed an aurora on Mars in visible light for the first time, with the sky glowing softly in green in the first viewing of an aurora from any planetary surface other than Earth.

Scientists said the aurora occurred on March 18, 2024, when super-energetic particles from the sun encountered the Martian atmosphere, precipitating a reaction that created a faint glow across the entire night sky. Auroras have been observed previously on Mars by satellites from orbit in ultraviolet wavelengths, but not in visible light.

The sun three days earlier had unleashed a solar flare and an accompanying coronal mass ejection - a huge explosion of gas and magnetic energy that brings with it large amounts of solar energetic particles - that traveled outward through the solar system. Mars is the fourth planet from the sun, following Mercury, Venus and Earth.

Scientists had simulated the event in advance and prepared instruments on the rover to be ready to observe the expected aurora. Perseverance has two instruments that are sensitive to wavelengths in the visible range, meaning they detect colors human eyes can see. The researchers used the rover's SuperCam spectrometer instrument to identify exactly the wavelength of the green glow and then used its Mastcam-Z camera to take a snapshot of the softly glowing green sky.

An aurora forms on Mars the same way as on Earth, with energetic charged particles colliding with atoms and molecules in the atmosphere, exciting them, and causing subatomic particles called electrons to emit light particles called photons.

"But on Earth, the charged particles are channeled into the polar regions by our planet's global magnetic field," said Elise Wright Knutsen, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oslo's Center for Space Sensors and Systems and lead author of the study published this week in the journal Science Advances.

"Mars has no global magnetic field so the charged particles bombarded all of Mars at the same time, which leads to this planet-wide aurora," Reuters quoted Knutsen as saying.

The green color occurred because of the interaction between the charged particles from the sun and oxygen in the Martian atmosphere. While auroras can be brilliant, as often seen in Earth's northernmost and southernmost regions, the one observed on Mars was quite faint.

"This specific aurora we observed on March 18th of last year would have been too faint for humans to see directly. But if we get a more intense solar storm, it could become bright enough for future astronauts to see. And with a camera, such as an iPhone, you would clearly see it, rather like how an aurora on Earth is always brighter in images than with the naked eye," Knutsen said.

This particular event did not impact Earth.

All the planets with atmospheres in our solar system experience auroras.

"Various types and wavelengths of aurora have been observed previously from Mars-orbiting satellites. All previous observations have been in the UV, but they have had wildly different shapes. From the global, diffuse aurora we observed now, to discrete arcs and patches near the crustal fields (regional magnetic fields) in the south, and large-scale sinuous shapes," Knutsen said.

If astronauts from Earth visit Mars and perhaps establish a long-term presence on the planet's surface, they may be treated to a nighttime light show.

"During a more intense solar storm, producing a brighter aurora, I think a sky which glows green from horizon to horizon will be eerily beautiful," Knutsen said.

"The aurora will appear as a soft green glow covering more or less the whole sky," Knutsen added. "Dust in the lower part of the atmosphere would obscure some of the light towards the horizon, and if you looked straight up it would also be fainter simply because looking at a slant angle will allow you to see through a thicker section of the atmosphere that is emitting the aurora."