My understanding is that you have four vectors (lonsimul, latsimul, lonobs, latobs) based on which you are performing a scatter plot. When you perform a scatter plot, the co-ordinates would be based on the data that you have in those four vectors.
Your first plot had center at (0,0) since your data could have been symmetric about (0,0) and hence (0,0) was in the center of the plot. Check the data and see if the behavior is expected.
If this does not match your needs, check the documentation page below to know more about axes properties.