Deep extinction mapping of the Taurus filament with the Calar Alto 3.5m telescope. The filament is more fragmented that originally thought and has a high mass-per-length value of M _line = 17M _sun pc^-1, making it star formation prone. The dense core mass function is similar to the one in the Pipe Nebula (Alves et al. 2007), in case you were wondering. Congratulations to Markus Schmalz for leading this effort successfully.