Scientific American covers by Don Dixon, November 1998
sciamcover9811 In December, 1997, a brilliant fireball blazed across the sky over Greenland in the early morning hours. Surveillance cameras in parking lots showed eerily-shifting shadows as the fireball crossed the sky. Weather satellite photos showed what appeared to be a cloud disturbance associated with a possible impact. Analysis of the trajectory suggested that the object had come in so fast that it was on a hyperbolic trajectory, indicating that it had come from beyond the solar system. Later studies indicated that this was unlikely, however. Search parties dispatched to the probable impact zone in the spring failed to find anything other than a possible residue of meteoric dust on the ice. The object probably exploded high in the air over a desolate region of the icecap.

The airblast was rendered as a small airbrush painting. The ice was created with sponge textures in acrylic and gouache, elaborated with brushwork. These texture elements were then scanned into Photoshop and cloned over a scan of a loose pencil sketch.