GALAXY EVOLUTION IN THE PRESENT DAY

New detections of coherent streams and merger remnants in the Galaxy have reinforced our picture that the Galaxy is not a static place even at the present day. This continuous process of gravitational interaction and accretion leaves its signature on the global density and kinematic structure of the Galaxy, allowing us to unravel the recent history of the Milky Way. With the right instrumentation, we can apply this close-up view of galaxy interactions to the interpretation of the kinematics, population content, stellar and dark matter density profiles of nearby galaxies and groups, shedding important light on the processes which set the distribution of galaxy properties we observe today and in the earlier universe.