The California wildfires are ravaging hundreds of thousands of acres of land, destroying and threatening people's homes, closing schools and causing residents to evacuate, pushed onward by the Santa Ana winds.

The wildfires are so massive they are visible from space.

NASA satellites and astronauts have been sharing images of the wildfires from space and the magnitude is staggering. The NASA images help first responders determine where and when to act, according to a post from the space agency.

The image embedded above was taken on Dec. 5 by the European Space Agency's Sentinel-2 satellite and in the picture, the orange shows the active fires and the brown is the land already burned.

The image embedded below was taken by the NASA's Terra satellite on Dec. 6 and the actively burning areas are outlined in red.