Robert Simmon is a Senior

Data Visualization Data and information visualization (data viz or info viz) is an interdisciplinary field that deals with the graphic representation of data and information. It is a particularly efficient way of communicating when the data or information is num ...

Engineer at

Planet Labs Planet Labs PBC (formerly Planet Labs, Inc. and Cosmogia, Inc.) is an American public Earth imaging company based in San Francisco, California. Their goal is to image the entirety of the Earth daily to monitor changes and pinpoint trends. The co ...

, a commercial

Earth observation Earth observation (EO) is the gathering of information about the physical, chemical, and biological systems of the planet Earth. It can be performed via remote-sensing technologies (Earth observation satellites) or through direct-contact sensors ...

company in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

. Prior to moving in 2014, he was employed as a Senior Program Analyst at

Goddard Space Flight Center The Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) is a major NASA space research laboratory located approximately northeast of Washington, D.C. in Greenbelt, Maryland, United States. Established on May 1, 1959 as NASA's first space flight center, GSFC empl ...

where he was affiliated with the Climate and Radiation Laboratory and the

NASA Earth Observatory NASA Earth Observatory is an online publishing outlet for NASA which was created in 1999. It is the principal source of satellite imagery and other scientific information pertaining to the climate and the Environment (biophysical), environment whi ...

. While serving as a Lead Data Visualizer and Information Designer at this division of

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeeding t ...

, Simmon is most notable for his visualization of the Western Hemisphere of planet Earth. Well known as the

Blue Marble ''The Blue Marble'' is an image of Earth taken on December 7, 1972, from a distance of around from the planet's surface. Taken by the crew of the Apollo 17 spacecraft on its way to the Moon, it is one of the most reproduced images in history. ...

, this image that would become the default wallpaper on the first iPhone in 2007. Furthermore, in Simmon's field of information visualization, through his work with NASA, he strove to "help people better understand how the Earth works."

Blue Marble

Originally produced in 2002 and then later finding its place as the wallpaper for the original iPhone in 2007, Simmon was able to use a series of light data, collected from NASA's

Terra satellite Terra (EOS AM-1) is a multi-national, NASA scientific research satellite in a Sun-synchronous orbit around the Earth that takes simultaneous measurements of Earth's atmosphere, land, and water to understand how Earth is changing and to identify ...

in order to construct the final result. Gathering data over the course of 4 months, as the satellite spun around its path, light data could be gathered from pole to pole of the surface below. Once the entirety of the surface data was collected, layers such as Specular Maps and Color Maps were able to be extracted and utilized to generate the representation of the Earth. Afterwards, the final images would be digitally composited together and applied to the surface of a computer generated sphere and composited together in Photoshop in order to render the final result. Due to the nature of the data collection process, a part of Simmon's responsibility would to be conceal any holes left by the satellites imaging. To accomplish this, areas around missing patches left in the cloud layers required additional touch-ups in

Photoshop Adobe Photoshop is a raster graphics editor developed and published by Adobe Inc. for Windows and macOS. It was originally created in 1988 by Thomas and John Knoll. Since then, the software has become the industry standard not only in raster ...

. Likewise, elements such as the atmosphere halo could not be collected from the satellite data and thereby had to be generated completely in Photoshop.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Simmon, Robert Living people NASA people Year of birth missing (living people)