Michael Zingale
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michaelzingale.bsky.social
Michael Zingale
@michaelzingale.bsky.social
2.5K followers 550 following 1.5K posts
computational astrophysicist
open source tool developer
professor
blower upper of stars
can recite π to 2 decimal places from memory
star wars fan
coffee aficionado

https://zingale.github.io
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michaelzingale.bsky.social
Two people on opposite aisles of a bus. One is looking out the window at a cliff with the caption "things I have to do". The other has a beautiful vista with a smile on their face with the caption "things I want to do"
November 5, 2025 at 8:45 PM
michaelzingale.bsky.social
pynucastro can now plot the nuclear partition functions from @rauscherthomas.bsky.social 's work:

pynucastro.github.io/pynucastro/n...

#astrocode

ne20 = pyna.Nucleus("ne20")
ne20.partition_function.plot()
nuclear partition function of Ne20 vs. temperature. It is 1 up to a few x 10**9 K and then rapidly increases to > 1.e6 at 1.e11 K.
November 5, 2025 at 1:55 PM
michaelzingale.bsky.social
What do you mean the clocks changed? Dinner time is dinner time.
A black dog with a white stripe on her nose and great muzzle, wearing an orange banana, giving an unimpressed look about waiting an hour more for dinner
November 2, 2025 at 6:40 PM
michaelzingale.bsky.social
I'm seeing a 2x speed up with python 3.14 compared to earlier (in our CI tests for pynucastro):
A screenshot of the GitHub actions showing timings to run the python tests with python versions 3.10 to 3.14. Most versions take ~ 30 minutes, but python 3.14 takes 15 minutes
October 17, 2025 at 12:29 PM
michaelzingale.bsky.social
we show this plot of binding energy / nucleon a lot in Stars class, but ever wonder how to make it? Here's a notebook that uses pynucastro:

zingale.github.io/stars/notebo...

#astro
A plot of binding energy per nucleon, showing a curve that stars at 0 MeV at mass number 1 and increases steeply to > 8 MeV / nucleon in the iron-group and then slowly declines for heavy A
October 6, 2025 at 6:44 PM
michaelzingale.bsky.social
I like my plot of equipotentials a lot, but I can never shake the fact that @sabinastro.bsky.social calls it the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle plot...

zingale.github.io/stars/notebo...
a plot of equipotentials in a binary star system, showing the Roche lobes and Lagrange points. The green color scheme makes it look like a teenage mutant ninja turtle...
October 6, 2025 at 6:40 PM
michaelzingale.bsky.social
14 years ago we adopted our pup Luna. Such a good girl!
A close up of a mostly black dog with a white stripe between the eyes and a lot of gray on the muzzle and paws. She is looking somewhat toward the camera
August 18, 2025 at 6:16 PM
michaelzingale.bsky.social
Someone got a couch ramp!
My (14 year old) puppy sitting on a couch looking at the camera. A ramp leading up to the couch is in the foreground.
August 9, 2025 at 10:14 PM
michaelzingale.bsky.social
new in pynucastro -- you can now color nuclei by abundance and rates by reaction rate strength easily:

pynucastro.github.io/pynucastro/p...

combined with the ability to read simulation data from a plot file via yt, this makes it easy to show reaction flow in simulations.

#astro
a reaction network visualization showing the nuclei (represented as nodes) connected by rates (represented by edges). The color of the nodes indicates the abundance -- here He4 is the most abundant. The color of the edges represents the reaction rate strength, with 3 He4 -> C12 being one of the strongest rates.
July 28, 2025 at 6:46 PM
michaelzingale.bsky.social
If you see this, post a video game that transports you to your childhood.
An image from the Zaxxon arcade game.
July 18, 2025 at 5:44 PM
michaelzingale.bsky.social
Beach Day
A black dog with a while/ great muzzle on the beach with gentle waves crashing behind her
June 3, 2025 at 1:24 PM
michaelzingale.bsky.social
Puppy timeline cleanser

#dogsky
A senior dog cuddled up ona couch with a colorful blanket
April 21, 2025 at 10:32 PM
michaelzingale.bsky.social
an Indiana Jones meme saying "Boundary conditions. why'd it have to be boundary conditions?". In the movie it refers to snakes, not boundary conditions.
April 10, 2025 at 7:20 PM
michaelzingale.bsky.social
meme updated to reflect the google AI generated search answers
A simpsons image of radioactive man in a sea of radioactive sludge with "protective" goggles. It usually says "my eyes! the goggles, they do nothing", but now says "my search! the google, they do nothing."
April 1, 2025 at 6:14 PM
michaelzingale.bsky.social
lode runner (Apple ][)

(image from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lode_Ru...)
A screenshot of Lode Runner on the Apple ][ computer, showing a blue maze like structure with someone running through it.
March 29, 2025 at 7:03 PM
michaelzingale.bsky.social
I hope you pointed out that one of them is actually a space station

(image: NASA/Cassini / JPL-Caltech / Space Science Institute)
Saturn's moon Mimas which looks an awful lot like the Death Star
March 11, 2025 at 10:12 PM
michaelzingale.bsky.social
fast furrier transform
image of a puppy and the corresponding fast fourier transform.
March 10, 2025 at 10:42 PM
michaelzingale.bsky.social
posted for no reason
Ned Flander's parents saying "we've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas"
March 7, 2025 at 12:07 AM
michaelzingale.bsky.social
Good day for a sunny spot
#dogsofbluesky
A senior pit mix dog laying in a sunbeam
March 2, 2025 at 10:19 PM
michaelzingale.bsky.social
I recommend this book:
fake O'Reilly book called "Exiting Vim, Eventually", with an Octopus as the cover art and the tagline "just memorize these fourteen contextually dependant instructions"
February 23, 2025 at 3:51 PM
michaelzingale.bsky.social
I've seen the approximation that for electron pressure, when the matter is partially degenerate, you can approximate the pressure as below (with a claim that it is ~ 2% accurate). Does anyone know a reference for this?

#astro
electron pressure is the square root of the sum of the squares of the ideal and degenerate pressures
February 4, 2025 at 10:35 PM
michaelzingale.bsky.social
Happy 14th birthday to my pup Luna.
A photo of a black dog with a white stripe between her eyes and lots of gray on her muzzle, but still as cute as ever
February 2, 2025 at 12:00 PM
michaelzingale.bsky.social
Rates also now know the publication sources they came from:
asking a pynucastro Rate for its source gives a dict including author, title, url, ...
January 23, 2025 at 7:07 PM
michaelzingale.bsky.social
Nuclei can now be added and subtracted
python code showing that when you add c12 and a proton you get n13
January 23, 2025 at 7:07 PM
michaelzingale.bsky.social
Another approximation: we created an NSE proton, which behaves as a proton, but can be used to decouple light and heavy nuclei (like the aprox19 and aprox21 networks).

This can considerably speed up large networks.
the Jacobian of a network that shows two types of protons, decoupling the light and heavy nuclei
January 23, 2025 at 7:07 PM