The psychological benefits of experiencing awe are well documented – it has been proven to lower heart rate, increase the presence of oxytocin and reduce inflammation – and it's one of the reasons that stargazing is so good for our mental health. "Experiencing awe regularly is deeply beneficial for our mental wellbeing because it helps us to feel connected to something bigger than ourselves," says Mark Westmoquette, an astrophysicist and yoga and meditation teacher who runs mindful stargazing retreats across the UK and Europe. "As we look up at the night sky and become aware of our place within it, that sense of wonder and awe can really shift our perspective around who and what we are." While the mental health benefits of being in nature are well documented, it's only recently that researchers have begun to study the effects of being in a nocturnal natural environment.

As volcanic activity continues at Mount Etna, Chris Baraniuk explores why Mount Etna and Mount Stromboli are becoming more lively.The top of the volcano exploded, sending a gigantic column of ash four or five kilometres (2.5-3 miles) into the sky. Mount Stromboli, off the north coast of Sicily, is one of the most active volcanoes in the world. On 11 July, it produced a paroxysm – a term in geology for a type of powerful eruption that interrupts a period of milder volcanic activity. In the villages nestled around the foot of the volcano, warning sirens blared.The paroxysm occurred shortly after 2pm local time and news of the event quickly began to spread online. Shortly after the explosion, two dozen or so volcanologists around Europe were due to attend one of their regular meetings. Chiara Maria Petrone, a volcano petrologist at the Natural History Museum in the UK, joined the session online."We started the meeting just an hour after the paroxysm," she recalls. "It was really exciting."Immediately, the scientists began bringing each other up to speed. Some shared real-time data from seismometers and other instruments. A few attendees even happened to be on the island of Stromboli at the time, according to Petrone, meaning they were able to describe what they were seeing. "It was all just happening at that moment," says .

Meaning "Sheep Islands", the Faroe Islands owe much of their unique identity to these hardy, tangle-haired creatures.Standing in the Faroe Islands National Archives in the capital, Tórshavn, I opened a small cardboard box and stared at an ancient book bound in leather and burnished by hundreds of years of handling.Known as Seyðabrævið (the Sheep Letter), it's a collection of laws enacted by the Faroes' then-Norwegian ruler Earl Hákon Magnússon in 1298 and is the nation's oldest surviving document. Among other things, it details the level of compensation to be paid if a man lets his dog chase another man's sheep; takes grazing land away from a neighbour's flock; or drives a wild sheep into another shepherd's herd, thus disturbing the "calmer" animals.  I spent a year living in these sparsely populated islands, and I never felt lonely when wandering by myself through the dark green mountains, since there were almost always sheep within view. For more than a millennium, these hardy, tangle-haired creatures have grazed the slopes clear of most vegetation apart from grass, physically sculpting the dramatic landscape of this remote, windswept nation and shaping the country's identity.