Definitely an improvement in the second one, pretty good! In my opinion the scale of the sparks is off. It looks like a gentle eruption like a “sparkler” firework. I would add a lot more initial velocity to them but have high damping so they slow down quickly.
I’m honestly distracted by the distortion. I’m not sure it’s distorting the right way, and seems really intense for the otherwise gentleness of the explosion.
I would personally lighten the color of the smoke, especially with the amount of lighting around that would illuminate it. It’s too thin to be that black in my opinion.
It seems like you’re going for something kinda like this reference, so maybe it’d give some clues?
Pretty good though!
Cheers,
-Jon