Filamentary structures and compact objects in the Aquila and Polaris clouds observed by<i>Herschel</i>

Our PACS and SPIRE images of the Aquila Rift and part of the Polaris Flare regions, taken during the science demonstration phase of <i>Herschel<i/> discovered fascinating, omnipresent filamentary structures that appear to be physically related to compact cores. We briefly describe a new multi-scale, multi-wavelength source extraction method used to detect objects and measure their parameters in our <i>Herschel<i/> images. All of the extracted starless cores (541 in Aquila and 302 in Polaris) appear to form in the long and very narrow filaments. With its combination of the far-IR resolution and sensitivity, <i>Herschel<i/> <i>directly<i/> reveals the filaments in which the dense cores are embedded; the filaments are resolved and have deconvolved widths of ~35” in Aquila and ~59” in Polaris (~9000 AU in both regions). Our first results of observations with <i>Herschel<i/> enable us to suggest that in general dense cores may originate in a process of fragmentation of complex networks of long, thin filaments, likely formed as a result of an interplay between gravity, interstellar turbulence, and magnetic fields. To unravel the roles of the processes, one has to obtain additional kinematic and polarization information; these follow-up observations are planned.