This is my first Houdini project, done with Apprentice HD 12.5. I was on a tight schedule and learning Houdini at the same time. I am not happy with the lighting and I wanted to do something with temperature radiation and illumination. I think the wake (cloud) looks good.

The latest issue of Nature Magazine (Nov7th?), chose it for their cover, which in the world of science is a big deal.

This is a simulation of the Chelyabinsk meteor that exploded over Siberia in February. The wake (cloud material) was simulated on Sandia's Redsky super computer by Mark Boslough. This individual time step had 129,000,000 data points. We simulated over 200 steps. The simulation data for the image was done at 60 seconds after the meteor impact.

Gorgeous work! Love the haze and rim lighting bleeding through on the underside of the trail. Seamless compositing with a convincing sense of mass and scale.