Most spacecraft looking back at our planet reveal a cloudy marble speckled with landmasses. Not so in this portrait taken in the gamma-ray spectrum.

NASA researchers Dirk Petry, of the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, assembled this view of Earth, which reveals four different looks depending on the wavelength observed.

“If our eyes could see high-energy gamma-rays, this is what the Earth would look like from space,” said Petry, who assembled this image from seven years worth of data culled by the Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory.

The Compton observatory was active between 1991 and 2000, though NASA released this image based on its data on March 24.

The colors in this image are all false, included to give viewers a visible spectrum reference to differentiate between the varying gamma-ray energy bands around Earth. The red image indicates lower gamma-ray energy levels, with the green version corresponding to higher levels and the blue image showing the highest energy levels of all. The fourth image (lower right) is a composite of all four panels together.

Gamma-rays are millions to trillions times more energetic that visible light. They are created in cosmic rays and other high-energy radiation from space collides with the Earth’s atmosphere.

-- SPACE.com Staff

Credit: NASA/CGRO/EGRET/Dirk Petry