The filamentary structure of the Taurus molecular cloud observed from Herschel at far-infrared wavelengths, from 160 to 500 𝜇m. 

Credit: ESA/Herschel/NASA/JPL-Caltech CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO; Acknowledgement: R. Hurt (JPL-Caltech).

Stars, including our Sun, are born in cold (~10 K) and dense (~100 cm-3) clouds (size ~10 pc or 3.1 × 1014 km) of gas and dust, popularly known as molecular clouds (MCs). Within MCs, the interplay of gravity, turbulence, magnetic fields, and stellar feedback gives rise to a hierarchy of dense substructures: parsec-scale clumps, 0.1 pc-wide filaments, and compact cores (<0.1 pc). Individual stars form in cores, clumps give rise to star clusters, while filaments act as mass flow channels from clouds to clumps/cores. In a simplistic analogy, these MCs can be thought of as machines that convert gas into stars. This leads to an obvious question: what is the rate and efficiency of this conversion, i.e., the star formation rate (SFR) and star formation efficiency (SFE)—and how are these quantities related to input material such as gas mass or gas mass surface density (Σgas)? These relations, popularly known as “star formation scaling laws”, are well studied at the extragalactic scale (~tens of kpcs) in the form of the Kennicutt-Schmidt relation (ΣSFR ∝ Σ1.4gas), where ΣSFR is the SFR surface density. At the cloud scale, studies have reported varying behavior in these relations depending on the dataset used, spatial resolution, and methodology. However, since gas-to-star conversion takes place at more localized levels—in clumps and cores—it is essential to investigate the behavior of scaling relations from cloud to clump to core scales to better understand the physical processes regulating star formation. We conducted a statistical study of 17 nearby cluster-forming clumps to examine the star formation scaling relations at the clump scale (see  Rawat et al. 2025). 

We studied the star-forming cloud Cep B using observations from the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope. Our observations reveal a long, dense filament of gas and dust where new stars are being born. We found that the cloud's magnetic field changes its orientation along the filament, indicating that it has played an important role in shaping the cloud. While gravity is pulling the filament inward and causing it to fragment into dense cores, the magnetic field provides support that slows the collapse. Some of these dense cores are already forming new stars. Our results show that Cep B is shaped by a balance between gravity, magnetic fields, and feedback from nearby massive stars, making it an excellent laboratory for understanding how stars and stellar clusters form (See Sandhyarani et al. 2026).