Neutron stars, the most dense astrophysical bodies we know of, are at the heart of many interesting astrophysical phenomena from their birth in supernova explosions to their deaths in collisions with other dense objects. Even though we have been witnessing the births of neutron stars in the night (or even day!) sky for thousands of years, the collision of two neutron stars was detected for the first time only two years ago through gravitational waves.

In this talk I will discuss what insights the detected signal, GW170817, has offered about the properties of astrophysical neutron stars and how it compares to other recent probes of neutron star matter such as NICER. I will also discuss what we expect to discover in the next few years about the properties of matter that is more dense than the nuclei everyday atoms are made of.