Astronomy Picture of the Day:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
This site is both eye candy and potentially your daily science snack, they show a new high rez image each day of something usually astronomy related, then explain in depth the nature of it, with rich, hotlinked detail - by NASA
I found this book, uh, relatively helpful when my curiosity drew me toward comparing some of the concepts you discuss above between the theories of Einstein and Hawking..
http://www.amazon.com/Einsteins-Univers ... 0517385708
Great to see the crew interested in similar stuff.
I recommend browsing APOD, it's followed daily by a lot of serious astronomers.