Unveiling an Old Disk around a Massive Young Leaking Blueberry in SDSS-IV MaNGA

Abstract

Extreme emission-line galaxies, such as blue compact dwarfs (BCDs), Green Peas (GPs), and blueberries in the local universe are potential candidates for understanding the nature of galaxies that reionized the early universe. Being low-mass, metal-poor starburst systems, they are understood to be local analogs of the high-redshift Lyman continuum and Lyα emitters (LAEs). Even with their proximity to us, we know little about their spatially resolved properties; while most blueberries and GPs are indeed compact, they remain unresolved. Here, we report the detection of a disk-like lower-surface-brightness (LSB) stellar host with a very old population around a blueberry LAE system using broad i-band imaging and integral field spectroscopic data from the SDSS and SDSS-IV MaNGA surveys, respectively. The LSB stellar host is structurally similar to that observed around local starburst BCDs. Furthermore, the kinematics of the studied blueberry source bears signs of misalignment between the gas and stellar components. Our findings establish an intriguing thread connecting the blueberry and an LSB disk with an old stellar population and suggest that blueberries and their high-redshift counterparts such as GPs do not represent peculiar cases of dwarf galaxy evolution. In fact, with respect to the structural properties of their host galaxies, they are compatible with a common evolutionary track of the main population of local BCDs.