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NASA
New Zealand's North and South Island are highlighted in this 2002 image from NASA's Terra satellite.
The movies based on "The Lord of the Rings" and now "The Hobbit" have turned a spotlight on the dramatic landscapes of New Zealand, and this image from about 450 miles up gives you a wide-screen perspective on a modern-day Middle Earth.
The readings that went into creating the nearly cloud-free view of the Pacific island nation were captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer aboard NASA's Terra satellite during passes in late 2002. That's just about the time that the second movie in the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, "The Two Towers," was making a splash at the box office.
Now New Zealand filmmaker Peter Jackson has come out with the first movie of his next trilogy, based on J.R.R. Tolkien's tales of dwarfs and hobbits, a dragon and a treasure in a mythical place called Middle Earth. "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" grabbed plenty of box-office treasure this weekend — $84.8 million, which translates into the best-ever three-day opening in December. (On the overall ranking for three-day openings, however, "The Hobbit" is No. 40.)
New Zealand is hoping for treasure as well: It provided more than $100 million in support for the moviemakers, and hopes to reap hundreds of millions of dollars in tourist trade sparked by the films. The country provided the backdrop for film locales ranging from the pastures of Hobbiton (near Matamata) to the volcanoes of Mordor (near Taupo). The airport in Wellington, which is New Zealand's capital as well as the home of Jackson's film operation, calls itself "the Middle of Middle Earth." Air New Zealand is now known as the "airline of Middle Earth."
To learn more about the "Hobbit" connection, check out this tale of my visit to Hobbiton, as well as our slideshow of film locales in New Zealand and our five favorite jumping-off points for adventures in Kiwi Land. To learn more about Terra's picture of New Zealand, head on over to the NASA Visible Earth website. And to see more views of Earth from space, click on these links from the Cosmic Log Space Advent Calendar:
- 2012 Cosmic Log Space Advent Calendar
- Day 1: A fantastic Chinese fan
- Day 2: Satellite shows a Grander Canyon
- Day 3: Typhoon stirs awe — and alarm
- Day 4: Glittering nighttime view of Riyadh
- Day 5: Night lights shine on 'Black Marble'
- Day 6: Holy sites seen at night
- Day 7: Blue Marble still leaves its mark
- Day 8: Satellites look into a volcano's hell
- Day 9: Jack Frost nipping at Alaska's nose
- Day 10: Cosmonaut looks down on peaks
- Day 11: Earth looms above moonwalker
- Day 12: Skytree casts shadow on Tokyo
- Day 13: Aurora sets stage for meteor show
- Day 14: Apollo's last look at Earthrise
- Day 15: A sobering moment from space
- 2011 Cosmic Log Space Advent Calendar
- 2010 Cosmic Log Space Advent Calendar
Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other science and space news coverage, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered via email. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about dwarf planets and the search for new worlds.
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Technically, Middle-earth (as it should be written) 'exists' "equivalent in latitude to the coastlands of Europe and the north shores of the Mediterranean. ... If Hobbiton and Rivendell are taken (as intended) to be at about the latitude of Oxford, then Minas Tirith, 600 miles south, is at about the latitude of Florence. The Mouths of Anduin and the ancient city of Pelargir are at about the latitude of ancient Troy." - from the Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (no. 294).
Though the geography does not match to anything today (and Tolkien did not try to make it match), Middle-earth mainly represents England and Northwest Europe, not New Zealand as this article suggests.
Where the Hobbits lived, "'The Shire' is based on rural England and not any other country in the world..."- from the Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (no. 190).
Just wanted to clarify this...that although New Zealand does capture all the landscapes of Middle-earth beautifully for a film (and makes it easy to film in one country by Peter Jackson who considers himself a New Zealand filmmaker), the original locations referenced in the books are more akin to the Northern Hemisphere if anywhere at all and more often than not have no direct geographical correlation with any particular place here on Earth except the Shire directly representing rural England.
I thought they used New Zealand to save money. They could have used many other locations for the films.
Get a life loser!! Nobody really cares about how much you think you know!
This is just PR for New Zealand tourism, calm down, any Tolkien fan knows this. Yes, moviegoers are a different kind of fan, but they'd never know the difference between an Orc and a Troll.
The Hobbit was influenced in part by Norse mythology. MIddle-earth is akin to the Norse "Midgard", which is land inhabited by, and known to, humans. Technically then, every country on earth = Midgard, or Middle-earth.
Why is Middle Earth on the surface of the Earth? Shouldn't it be in the center?
I'm no Tolkien nut, but I believe "Middle" refers to the temporal incarnation of Earth, not its position relative to the surface.
double post deleted
No more than 'Central America...'
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Middle-earth
Middle-earth
Mid"dle-earth`\, n. The world, considered as lying between heaven and hell. [Obs.] --Shak.
I'm planning to visit Mordor next winter... :)
I appreciate that the films were made in New Zealand, but the books were written in England using family names from the Midwest of the United States (Gandalf, Proudfeet, Underhill, etc.)
Tolkein was a scholar of the Middle Ages, with a wonderful translation of "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight." He knew that the people of the Middle Ages considered "Middle Earth" to be continental Europe and England.
He also wrote the Oxford English Dictionary. His fascination with family names of the Appalachians can't be too much of a coincidence. So, either Middle Earth is in the Appalachians, or it is in England.
Since the dictionary was first published when he was 3 yrs old, that seems unlikely.
It also seems quite likely that the names Elizabeth references were English names before they were Midwestern ones. Interesting theory though.
The Land of the Long White Cloud. Beautiful photo!
Is that the eye of a cyclone between the two islands? The overall movement of the clouds doesn't look rotational enough for that kind of storm, but it sure looks like a well formed eye. Maybe it's a satellite passing below the camera.
Thanks Al!