Far from existing as "island universes", the galaxies we see today in the local universe are the product of nearly 14 billion years worth of interactions and mergers. “Galactic fossils” are the tell-tale remnants that these interactions leave behind - tails, streams, shells, and other structures - which can be used to probe the specific histories of individual galaxies. This presentation will focus on an ultra-deep imaging survey of the Virgo Cluster used to identify galactic fossils and explore how galactic interactions play out in one of the universe's most violent and extreme environments.

Craig Rudick moved to the Lehigh Valley in 2024 and joined LVAAS in late 2025. He earned a PhD in Astronomy from Case Western Reserve University in 2011, studying galaxy evolution. His Bachelors in Physics and Astronomy is from Pitt, and he did a postdoctoral fellowship at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland. He stopped being a research astronomer in 2013 when he got a job as a Data Scientist, and today he works as a Product Manager for a small software company.

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