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rsimmon.bsky.social
Robert Simmon
@rsimmon.bsky.social
5.5K followers 1.1K following 2K posts
Data Visualization. Ex-Planet & NASA Earth Observatory. Blue Marble, Earth at Night, color, cartography, occasionally skewed views of Earth. Looking for a job.
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Reposted by Robert Simmon
datavisfriendly.bsky.social
#TodayinHistory #dataviz #Onthisday #OTD 📊
🎂Dec 28, 1804 Alexander Keith Johnston born in Kirkhill, Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

1843: Ethnographic maps showing distribution of ethnic groups throughout the world
1850: Atlas of distributions of plants
Alexander Keith Johnson's 1843 ethnographic map showing distribution of ethnic groups throughout the world. It features only Europe and Asia. Geographic regions are shaded according to the predominant ethnic group in a range of soft hues. Keith Johnson's 1850 Geographical Distribution of Plants. It consists of two horizontal panels. The top shows height profiles of continents with annotations of growing zones for plants. The bottom is a world map with intricate classed shading according to classification of plant species.. Photo of Alexander Keith Johnson looking stern, seated next to a desk with a globe and overflowing papers.
December 29, 2025 at 3:30 AM
Reposted by Robert Simmon
jacquelyngill.bsky.social
Artist friends, check out a fun paid opportunity!
mrillig.bsky.social Matthias C. Rillig @mrillig.bsky.social · 1d
I am interested in working with an artist on a graphic novel on soil and/ or global environmental change. The lab would have money to fund this.

Do you know of any graphic artists that would be interested?
December 28, 2025 at 12:44 PM
rsimmon.bsky.social
Looks like Mars!
callanbentley.bsky.social Callan Bentley @callanbentley.bsky.social · 2d
Cool contrasting collapse patterns side by side on the leeward side of the crest of a sand dune in Mesquite Flats. ⚒️
Two areas where sand is collapsing downward on a sand dune crest - one is a concave scoop at the top with convex runout on the bottom, and seems to have two (overlapping) slip events, resulting in a sort of "Figure 8" pattern, and the other is more of a boxy rectangular shape.
December 27, 2025 at 10:48 PM
Reposted by Robert Simmon
mapcenter.com
1. Peters ripped off Gall and took credit. Probably.
2. Peters pretended his was the first equal area map (It wasn't. At all)
3. Peters massively distorts shapes which are also important in geography!
4. His claims reduced geography to a false premise- that size is the only thing that matters.
December 27, 2025 at 8:32 PM
Reposted by Robert Simmon
heatherreese.bsky.social
📢 Do you want to do a #PhD using #hyperspectral satellite data to observe climate influences on tundra vegetation in Sweden? With me and @robertgbjork.bsky.social at U of Gothenburg. Apply by 19 Jan 2026. bit.ly/44duvJI
Abisko Sweden looking over Torneträsk
November 21, 2025 at 9:53 AM
rsimmon.bsky.social
Poignant.
December 26, 2025 at 2:04 AM
Reposted by Robert Simmon
franzanth.bsky.social
Have yourself a merry little Carboniferous.
#Art #SciArt #PaleoArt #Inverts
a pine tree with bugs hanging all around it. at the very top is a dragonfly-like meganeura with open wings, circling the base is the giant millipede arthropleura. on the branches sit various insects and circular pine cones.
December 20, 2024 at 4:24 PM
Reposted by Robert Simmon
theplanetaryguy.bsky.social
This day 57 years ago.

Earthrise.

A remarkable view of Earth hoving into view as the Apollo 8 command module flew over the lunar surface.

That's us. That's home.
Gibbous Earth hovering over the lunar surface against a pitch-black sky. A remarkable view photographed by Bill Anders on Christmas Eve 1968.
December 24, 2025 at 10:05 PM
rsimmon.bsky.social
Awesome! I’m looking forward to seeing more.
kosmi.bsky.social kosmi.bsky.social @kosmi.bsky.social · 6d
🧵

My old collection of >100 high resolution images taken by Pleiades satellites between 2013 and 2021.

My processing skills weren't very good and Bsky can't show full res, but here they are.

I'm planning to add more from time to time.

1. Beijing-Daxing Airport terminal in China ( 2021-10-26 ).
December 23, 2025 at 1:41 PM
Reposted by Robert Simmon
andrealuck.bsky.social
1/n

2 NEW epic images of Phobos over Mars just released by @esa.int Mars Express

This view is especially striking, with Phobos between the Tharsis volcanoes and Noctis Labyrinthus–Valles Marineris

Full resolution 300MP(!) & info on: flic.kr/p/2rMW4so
Credit: ESA/DLR/FUBerlin/AndreaLuck CC BY 🧪🔭
A wide view of the planet Mars fills the frame, shown as a curved, rust-colored world against black space. The bottom edge fades into darkness, marking the planet’s night side, while the upper portion is brightly lit by sunlight. Near the right side are three large, round volcanic mountains of the Tharsis region, each with a wide circular base and a darker central caldera, resembling shallow craters pressed into the surface. North of these volcanoes, stretching almost vertically across the upper right half of the planet, lies Noctis Labyrinthus and Valles Marineris: an immense system of deep canyons and fractured terrain that appears as pale, branching scars and cracks, partly softened by hazy, cloud-like atmospheric features. Near the center of the image, positioned between the volcanoes and the canyon system, a small dark oval appears against Mars’s surface. This is Phobos, one of Mars’s satellites. Its tiny size stands out sharply against the vast scale of the planet below.
December 21, 2025 at 2:12 PM
Reposted by Robert Simmon
eos.org
How can the legacy of ancient Amazonian societies help the forest withstand climate change today? A new study presented at #AGU25 explains.
How Ancient Indigenous Societies Made Today’s Amazon More Resilient - Eos
Portions of the forest managed by pre-Columbian populations hold higher biomass and are more able to withstand climate change.
eos.org
December 21, 2025 at 2:55 PM
Reposted by Robert Simmon
wed-explorer.bsky.social
It’s interesting how #satellites can now photograph each other from space, turning anomalies into visible stories. The #satellite staying mostly intact suggests a quiet failure, not a dramatic breakup. #Space is harsh, and reentry like this is a normal part of the cycle. #Starlink 🛰🌍

📸X @vantortech
Imagery collected by Vantor’s WorldView-3 satellite about 1 day after the anomaly shows that starlink Satellite 35956 is largely intact. The 12-cm resolution image was collected over Alaska from 241 km away.
December 20, 2025 at 7:38 PM
rsimmon.bsky.social
Baby landslide above Lake Chabot. I wonder if it’s just from the rain, or triggered by an #earthquake.
Rocks spilled across a wet asphalt path.
December 20, 2025 at 7:43 PM
rsimmon.bsky.social
Two #earthquakes in 5 minutes. The Christmas tree is a very sensitive detector.
December 20, 2025 at 3:57 AM
rsimmon.bsky.social
#dataviz 📊
datarevelations.com Steve Wexler @datarevelations.com · 9d
HOW COOL IS THIS TABLE?!

The table on the left shows my results for the first three tournaments I've played in Learned League. The green highlights are lightly-rendered bars.

I drew the bars in the table on the right in case you don't see them on the left.

Great way to augment a table.
December 19, 2025 at 11:22 PM
Reposted by Robert Simmon
climate.us
Art x Climate is an integral part of the Fifth National Climate Assessment (NCA5), restored by Climate.us.
One of the featured artworks is “San Francisco Air Quality Fall 2020” by Lorraine Woodruff-Long.
Year and Medium: 2020, fiber
Image with artwork from the Fifth National Climate Assessment and a caption that begins, “This quilt was made as the fires raged in Northern California from September 3 through the first rains of the season on November 8, 2020. Each four-inch square was modeled from the PurpleAir.com outdoor Air Quality Index (AQI) of San Francisco. The higher the AQI, the greater the level of air pollution and the greater the health concern. Air quality ranged from purple/red (hazardous/unhealthy), to orange/yellow (unhealthy for sensitive groups/moderate) to green (good/satisfactory). San Francisco’s microclimates cause variety across the city, as indicated by the varied confetti and bar colors.”
December 19, 2025 at 2:15 PM
Reposted by Robert Simmon
infowetrust.com
For all dedicated to craft and advancing our understanding of reality, 2025 wasn’t the most harmonious trip around the sun. Yet we stayed productive and strove to make things better.

My top 5 essays according to my own capricious whim (and some studio notes): www.chartography.net/p/curiosity-...
Curiosity, Craft, and Clarity
My top 5 essays of 2025 (plus a few studio notes).
www.chartography.net
December 18, 2025 at 5:46 PM
rsimmon.bsky.social
Tule fog, Sutter Buttes, California. Captured by Sentinel-2C on December 14, 2025.

🛰️🖼️
Satellite image showing the peaks of the Sutter Buttes peaking out of the Tule Fog shrouding the Central Valley. Only the highest elevations are visible, surrounded by miles of textured white low-level clouds.
December 18, 2025 at 4:25 PM
rsimmon.bsky.social
I love the typeface used for the country labels.
jeffasher.bsky.social Jeff Asher @jeffasher.bsky.social · 11d
Speaking of awesome, my dad is retiring and so we finally digitized my grandfather's WWII maps with notes and his route in pencil
December 18, 2025 at 3:30 AM
Reposted by Robert Simmon
revkin.bsky.social
After a day of dead-serious reporting on Trump's and Vought's attempted demolition of @ncar-acom.bsky.social, it's worth re-upping Woody Allen's 1973 "Sleeper" portrait of this climate research hub. The black and white photos are from NCAR's online archive (link is in my post below). #saveNCAR 🧪🌏
December 18, 2025 at 2:49 AM
rsimmon.bsky.social
“In one of Roman’s planned sky surveys, the telescope will cover in nine months what would take Hubble between 1,000 and 2,000 years.”

🤯
December 17, 2025 at 2:09 PM
Reposted by Robert Simmon
alexwitze.bsky.social
Attendance at US-based science conferences is bouncing around this year but generally down. #AGU25 has ~10k fewer this year! I explored these trends for @nature.com — including solutions to keep conferences local & productive:

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

🧪
Scientists skip key US meetings — and seize on smaller alternatives
Researchers are devising creative ways to get together as Trump’s policies curb travel to US gatherings.
www.nature.com
December 16, 2025 at 5:18 PM
rsimmon.bsky.social
I *just* noticed this detail in Cartography by @kennethfield.bsky.social & I literally LOLed (there may even be a few tears of laughter on my cheek right now). What a delightful easter egg.
Photo of a thumb printed on the edge of a page in the book Cartography in the entry for animation. It’s a subtle indicator that the book is a flipbook (or kineograph), and there’s an animation of a spinning globe included in the page margins.
December 15, 2025 at 5:22 PM
rsimmon.bsky.social
Brilliant choice of bivariate color palette in this map of water stress from @wriclimate.bsky.social & ESRI.

I love how it draws attention to areas with high demand for water with saturated colors, & distinguishes low & high availability with a striking change in hue.

via @dantoearth.bsky.social
Map of water availability and water stress in South America. The map uses a bivariate color palette with dark blue indicating high water availability and demand, light blue/cyan indicating high water availability and low demand, gray showing low water availability and demand, and orange indicating low water availability with high water demand. Most of the Amazon is low water stress. Atlantic Brazil, the west coast bordering the Andes, and the pampas region have the most water stress. Map of water availability and water demand in North America. The map uses a bivariate color palette with dark blue indicating high water availability and demand, light blue/cyan indicating high water availability and low demand, gray showing low water availability and demand, and orange indicating low water availability with high water demand. Most of the Amazon is low water stress. Mexico and the U.S. northern plains and southwest have the most water stress. The Pacific Northwest, Great Lakes region, and northeast/Atlantic regions have high demand and availability. Alaska and northern Canada have high availability and low demand, except for the Alaskan North slope with lower availability and higher demand.
December 15, 2025 at 4:16 PM