A Comparison between Magnetic Field Directions Inferred from Planck and Starlight Polarimetry toward Gould Belt Clouds

We compare the magnetic field (B-field) orientations inferred from Planck 353 GHz thermal dust polarization and starlight polarimetry data and study the cloud-field alignment based on these two tracers within Gould Belt clouds, which show good agreement with each other. Furthermore, we analyze two fundamentally different alignment studies—global (cloud scale, ∼10–100 pc) cloud-field alignment, which compares mean fields and global cloud orientations, and local (pixel size scale, ∼0.1–1 pc) structure-field alignment, which compares this relation pixel by pixel—and find the connection between them.