Rethinking Galactic Architecture: Clues from Satellites and Destroyed Dwarfs

The cannibalistic nature of the Milky Way galaxy leads to the continuous capture and destruction of lower-mass, dwarf galaxies. The remains of destroyed dwarfs are splayed out in a diffuse stellar halo, while the "survivors" comprise the satellite population that orbits the Milky Way. These halo populations provide a unique opportunity to decipher the accretion history of the Milky Way with a level of detail that cannot be achieved in any other galaxy. I will discuss current and future projects aiming to decipher the nature of the halo's building blocks. Observational studies of halo star counts and chemical abundances of halo stars suggest that the halo is dominated by relatively massive accretion event(s), in qualitative agreement with the predictions of numerical simulations. I will discuss an ongoing project utilizing multi-epoch HST photometry and Keck spectroscopy that will help provide a quantitative analysis of the mass spectrum of dwarfs that built up the halo. I wil  l also d  iscuss the significance of group-infall onto Milky Way mass halos, and the latest observational evidence for associations between satellite dwarfs and/or substructures in our Galaxy.