Then click on checker on the right side of Life Incandescence attribute. This will open create texture window. Create ramp texture.

Life Incandescence will take the values from ramp, and calculate particle color  based on life of each particle. In hypershade you can see three new nodes.

Edit the ramp.

Note, the bottom of the ramp is beginning of particle’s life and the top of the ramp is end. Tweak the colors to start with bright orange and change to orange and than to black.

Also make one ramp for life transparency. Set its color to go from gray to white.

This will make particles fade.

Now you can see that every particle is the same size. I don’t like that. The trail shall get thicker at the end.

So go to per particle attributes tab and click general button. Then select RadiusPP attribute, and click add.

Notice that RadiusPP is now in the list. Hold RMB on it. You shall get small popup menu. Choose create ramp. Particle size will be connected to the ramp texture.

Hold RMB on RadiusPP and choose edit ramp. Edit the ramp so the first color is gray with .3 value and the last color (top color) shall be set to white (value of 1).

This means that every particle will grow from .3 to 1.

Now you can render. I don’t like that gaps in the trail.

Select emitter and change rate to 400. Now more particles will be emitted.

Also you can see that particles die to fast (trail is too short). Under particleShape1 there’s tab called lifespan Attributes. Open it and set Lifespan Mode to Random Range and set lifespan to 2, and Lifespan Random to 0.2

This means that every particle will live 2 seconds (48 frames) plus/minus 0.2 seconds.

Now trail could behave more randomly. To do that select the particle and go to fields/turbulence. Set attenuation to 0. And magnitude to 2.5 or 3. Magnitude is the strength of the field. Also set frequency to 3 or 4.

Now make nurbs sphere and scale it. This will be sky.

Assign surface shader to it and assign ramp texture to its color. Set the color’s like I did. Also set ramp to U ramp. Also if you look the Sphere Shape node go to render stats tab and turn off cast shadows and receive shadows.

Now set renderer to Mental Ray. I prefer using Mental Ray with particles and fluids since it could give nice results especially when using final gather. Also Mental Ray provides faster raytracing with volumetric objects.

Select Directional light that you previously created and turn on raytrace shadows. Increase Shadow Rays to 5. Under mental ray settings turn on final gathering. Final gather will use that sky sphere ass illumination object.

Now if you render you can see nice result. However I don’t like the shading of particles. It looks good from distance but it’s useless for close ups.