Looking into a black hole

"Using new data from ESA's XMM-Newton spaceborne observatory, astronomers have probed closer than ever to a supermassive black hole lying deep at the core of a distant active galaxy." [The picture is an artist's illustration, not a photo.]

Neutron star crusts are insane

"Exhibiting extreme gravity while rotating as fast as 700 times per second, neutron stars are massive stars that collapsed once their cores ceased nuclear fusion and energy production. The only things more dense are black holes, as a teaspoonful of neutron star matter would weigh about 100 million tons."

From Eureka via Crunchgear via Gizmodo. Everyone likes this.