Musca APEX 12CO(2-1), 13CO(2-1) and C18O(2-1) data

Connected to the crest, a separate gas component at T~15K and n_H2_~10^3^cm^-3^ is found, the so-called strands. The velocity-coherent filament crest has an organised transverse velocity gradient that is linked to the kinematics of the nearby ambient cloud. This velocity gradient has an angle >=30{deg} with respect to the local magnetic field orientation derived from Planck, and the magnitude of the velocity gradient is similar to the transonic linewidth of the filament crest.

Studying the large scale kinematics, we find coherence of the asymmetric kinematics from the 50pc HI cloud down to the Musca filament. We also report a strong [C^18^O]/[^13^CO] abundance drop by an order of magnitude from the filament crest to the strands over a distance <0.2pc in a weak ambient far-ultraviolet (FUV) field. The dense Musca filament crest is a long-lived (several crossing times), dynamic structure that can form stars in the near future because of continuous mass accretion replenishing the filament.

This mass accretion on the filament appears to be triggered by a HI cloud-cloud collision, which bends the magnetic field around dense filaments. This bending of the magnetic field is then responsible for the observed asymmetric accretion scenario of the Musca filament, which is, for instance, seen as a V-shape in the position-velocity (PV) diagram.