Invited review abstract

I will present recent Herschel PACS/SPIRE observations, from 70 to 500 microns, part of the Hi-GAL and HOBYS key-projects. In particular, the new SPIRE maps of Vela-C cloud (HOBYS) allow a direct comparison with previous BLAST observations of the same star-forming region. The better performance of Herschel both in angular resolution and sensitivity gives us the chance to obtain a more robust statistics of the pre- and proto-stellar cores in Vela-C, and to better characterize the core mass function (CMF) towards lower masses. Then I will compare the Vela-C CMF with those derived from Herschel observations of two portions of the Galactic plane, namely the Hi-GAL tiles centered at l=30° and l=59°, respectively.