Here's the scene from "Tale of Two Cities", perhaps the best view we've had of the island so far, and the one that best describes both its shape and size.
We know there are at least three major sections of plane that hit the island; the tail section, the fuselage, and the cockpit.
Based on dialogue from that scene (Ben telling Goodwin he could be there in an hour if he runs), the closer smoke is the tail section, despite the appearance that the smoke is coming from the shore and not the water. At any rate, we know it is not the cockpit, as that was inland.
The furthest smoke is almost certainly the fuselage; it's producing the most amount of smoke, far more than the cockpit would have generated right away. Indeed, we can safely say that though the cockpit landed relatively near the fuselage, there is no sign of its landing here, which is fine.
So working under the assumption that the fuselage is the farthest smoke and the tail section the nearest, we can begin to take a grasp of how massive this island really is. We have two general distances. The first is the distance between the fuselage and the tail section, which was a couple of days' hike for the survivors, who of course had amateur orienteering skills and were forced to work over various types of rough terrain. The second is the distance from Othersville, seen in the foreground, and the tail section, which Ben estimated as an hour's run for the expertly-trained Goodwin over similarly rough ground. Ben could of course have been wrong, but we do know that Goodwin was there on Day 1 so he was there in short order. Working from that, we might conclude that Othersville is closer to the tail section than the fuselage is. Looking at that picture, and taking the distances into account, you see that this is a massive, massive island, and it's probable that all the action seen in the first two seasons, from the cockpit to the hatch to the cave to the Black Rock to Rousseau's signal fire, has all taken place in the chunk of island in between those two plumes of smoke.
Questions still arise.
How much land is there to the left? Is that side of the island slender or round? Sayid went in that direction in season one but didn't get very far before being captured by Rousseau.
How much land is "behind" Othersville? Is it near one end of the island, or is it in the middle section, making the landmass so large it should be seen from space? To answer this question we should examine the boat ride taken by Sayid, Jin and Sun. They traversed the right side of the island...that is, the side we can see in the picture. During their journey the island is passing from left to right. As massive as the island appears to be, they almost certainly could have covered that distance and then some by the time they found the Palau Ferry dock. So their trip took them past the tail section and likely past Othersville as well, where along the way they found the statue and the Arrow camp (note: Michael arrives at the Arrow camp from the left, but it's entirely possible they just looped around when they brought him there). If Othersville were truly at the end of the island, then the boat would have sailed around it and wound up on the "left" side. This would be fine except that they would certainly have seen Hydra Island by then, having covered the majority of shoreline. Perhaps they saw it and didn't think it noteworthy, but this is unlikely. So to keep Hydra hidden from their view so far, it's likely that Othersville itself is nowhere the end of the island, and that it is very, very, very long indeed.
Which brings us to the newest puzzle: where is Hydra Island?
During the pan across Sawyer's field of vision, the entire Lost Island fits almost entirely in the frame. Since we've established the island to be extremely long, we can conclude that Sawyer is looking at one of its ends, and that Hydra effectively dots the "i".
Realistically one might conclude that the most immediate range is the one we appear to be looking down from in the first image; in other words, right over that first ridge is Othersville Valley. This would mean the more distant mountains off to the right would be the site of the tail section, which would mean eagle-eyed tailies could have walked a few hundred yards down their beach and seen Hydra Island, though from that perspective it may not have appeared to be a separate island (or it did and none of the surviving tailies have cared enough to make it known). However, if this were the case, Sayid & co. would certainly have found Hydra Island in the few days they were sailing; the distance is far, but not too far for a boat.
This means that a) Hydra Island is invisible to Lost Island, which, barring further evidence, is frankly absurd, or b) Othersville Valley is likelier to be behind the FAR mountains on the right of Sawyer's view, and that Lost Island is twice as long as it appeared in the season premiere, with hundreds of square miles yet to be explored.
Kelvin's map implied a relatively round island, which clearly cannot be the case in any event. This is understandable since there was an octagonal Dharma symbol on the door and the Swan painters simply used it as a visible reference guide when drawing the ultraviolet map. But it was misleading. Swan and Hydra do indeed appear to be at opposite ends of the island, but the other stations cannot be to scale and may in fact be strewn as randomly about the island as the annotations around the map.
There needs to be a map of the island. I would say that's the question I need answered the most this season.
We know there are at least three major sections of plane that hit the island; the tail section, the fuselage, and the cockpit.
Based on dialogue from that scene (Ben telling Goodwin he could be there in an hour if he runs), the closer smoke is the tail section, despite the appearance that the smoke is coming from the shore and not the water. At any rate, we know it is not the cockpit, as that was inland.
The furthest smoke is almost certainly the fuselage; it's producing the most amount of smoke, far more than the cockpit would have generated right away. Indeed, we can safely say that though the cockpit landed relatively near the fuselage, there is no sign of its landing here, which is fine.
So working under the assumption that the fuselage is the farthest smoke and the tail section the nearest, we can begin to take a grasp of how massive this island really is. We have two general distances. The first is the distance between the fuselage and the tail section, which was a couple of days' hike for the survivors, who of course had amateur orienteering skills and were forced to work over various types of rough terrain. The second is the distance from Othersville, seen in the foreground, and the tail section, which Ben estimated as an hour's run for the expertly-trained Goodwin over similarly rough ground. Ben could of course have been wrong, but we do know that Goodwin was there on Day 1 so he was there in short order. Working from that, we might conclude that Othersville is closer to the tail section than the fuselage is. Looking at that picture, and taking the distances into account, you see that this is a massive, massive island, and it's probable that all the action seen in the first two seasons, from the cockpit to the hatch to the cave to the Black Rock to Rousseau's signal fire, has all taken place in the chunk of island in between those two plumes of smoke.
Questions still arise.
How much land is there to the left? Is that side of the island slender or round? Sayid went in that direction in season one but didn't get very far before being captured by Rousseau.
How much land is "behind" Othersville? Is it near one end of the island, or is it in the middle section, making the landmass so large it should be seen from space? To answer this question we should examine the boat ride taken by Sayid, Jin and Sun. They traversed the right side of the island...that is, the side we can see in the picture. During their journey the island is passing from left to right. As massive as the island appears to be, they almost certainly could have covered that distance and then some by the time they found the Palau Ferry dock. So their trip took them past the tail section and likely past Othersville as well, where along the way they found the statue and the Arrow camp (note: Michael arrives at the Arrow camp from the left, but it's entirely possible they just looped around when they brought him there). If Othersville were truly at the end of the island, then the boat would have sailed around it and wound up on the "left" side. This would be fine except that they would certainly have seen Hydra Island by then, having covered the majority of shoreline. Perhaps they saw it and didn't think it noteworthy, but this is unlikely. So to keep Hydra hidden from their view so far, it's likely that Othersville itself is nowhere the end of the island, and that it is very, very, very long indeed.
Which brings us to the newest puzzle: where is Hydra Island?
During the pan across Sawyer's field of vision, the entire Lost Island fits almost entirely in the frame. Since we've established the island to be extremely long, we can conclude that Sawyer is looking at one of its ends, and that Hydra effectively dots the "i".
Realistically one might conclude that the most immediate range is the one we appear to be looking down from in the first image; in other words, right over that first ridge is Othersville Valley. This would mean the more distant mountains off to the right would be the site of the tail section, which would mean eagle-eyed tailies could have walked a few hundred yards down their beach and seen Hydra Island, though from that perspective it may not have appeared to be a separate island (or it did and none of the surviving tailies have cared enough to make it known). However, if this were the case, Sayid & co. would certainly have found Hydra Island in the few days they were sailing; the distance is far, but not too far for a boat.
This means that a) Hydra Island is invisible to Lost Island, which, barring further evidence, is frankly absurd, or b) Othersville Valley is likelier to be behind the FAR mountains on the right of Sawyer's view, and that Lost Island is twice as long as it appeared in the season premiere, with hundreds of square miles yet to be explored.
Kelvin's map implied a relatively round island, which clearly cannot be the case in any event. This is understandable since there was an octagonal Dharma symbol on the door and the Swan painters simply used it as a visible reference guide when drawing the ultraviolet map. But it was misleading. Swan and Hydra do indeed appear to be at opposite ends of the island, but the other stations cannot be to scale and may in fact be strewn as randomly about the island as the annotations around the map.
There needs to be a map of the island. I would say that's the question I need answered the most this season.
