Foraging blueberries in the local Universe: spatially resolved spectroscopy of a blueberry galaxy

Speaker: Aleksandra Isajeva (University of Cambridge)
Series: Hills Coffee Talks

Blueberry galaxies are among the most extreme star-forming dwarf systems in the local Universe and are considered the most faithful local analogues of the galaxies thought to have driven the Epoch of Reionization. What triggers their starburst remains poorly understood. Spatially resolved integral field spectroscopy can reveal kinematic structures, metallicity, and ionisation state of the interstellar medium of blueberry galaxies. I foraged a sample of 5 blueberry galaxies with VLT/MUSE observations by cross-referencing the Kouroumpatzakis et al 2024 catalogue of confirmed blueberry galaxies and the ESO archive. In this talk, I will present results of spaxel-by-spaxel analysis of one of the blueberries, investigating the origin of its starburst and the possibility of an AGN-like central source.