If it hadn't been in an art museum [edited by admin - be nice now] wouldn't have known it was supposed to be "art" in the first place.

Wellerstein is an historian, not a physicist, and he really screwed this up. A nuclear explosion *is* the closest analogy to a meteor exploding in the atmosphere. His article is being ripped to shreds in the comments section. I would recommend removing this article before more disinformation is spread.

So what good are these monitors if they are not actually being monitored?

The picture is a fake. The Bad Astronomer just covered this: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2012/08/10/an-unreal-mars-skyline