We present a new set of high resolution dust extinction maps of the nearby and essentially starless Pipe Nebula molecular cloud .
The maps were constructed from a concerted deep near-infrared imaging survey with the ESO-VLT , ESO-NTT , CAHA 3.5m telescopes , and 2MASS data .
The new maps have a resolution three times higher than the previous extinction map of this cloud by Lombardi et al .
( 2006 ) and are able to resolve structure down to 2600 AU .
We detect 244 significant extinction peaks across the cloud .
These peaks have masses between 0.1 and 18.4 M _ { \odot } , diameters between 1.2 and 5.7 \times 10 ^ { 4 } AU ( 0.06 and 0.28 pc ) , and mean densities of about 10 ^ { 4 } cm ^ { -3 } , all in good agreement with previous results .
From the analysis of the Mean Surface Density of Companions we find a well defined scale near 1.4 \times 10 ^ { 4 } AU below which we detect a significant decrease in structure of the cloud .
This scale is smaller than the Jeans Length calculated from the mean density of the peaks .
The surface density of peaks is not uniform but instead it displays clustering .
Extinction peaks in the Pipe Nebula appear to have a spatial distribution similar to the stars in Taurus , suggesting that the spatial distribution of stars evolves directly from the primordial spatial distribution of high density material .