Distance, magnetic field and kinematics of a filamentary cloud LDN 1157
  LDN 1157, is one of the several clouds situated in the cloud complex, LDN
1147/1158, represents a coma-shaped morphology with a well-collimated bipolar
outflow emanating from a Class 0 protostar, LDN 1157-mm. The main goals of this
work are (a) to map the inter-cloud magnetic field (ICMF) geometry of the
region surrounding LDN 1157 to investigate its relationship with the cloud
morphology, with the outflow direction and with the core magnetic field (CMF)
geometry inferred from the mm- and sub-mm polarization results from the
literature, and (b) to investigate the kinematic structure of the cloud. We
carried out R-band polarization observations of the stars projected on the
cloud to map the pc-scale magnetic field geometry and made spectroscopic
observations of the entire cloud in 12CO, C18O and N2H+ (J=1-0) lines to
investigate its kinematic structure. We obtained a distance of 340$\pm$3 pc to
the LDN 1147/1158, complex based on the Gaia DR2 parallaxes and proper motion
values of the three YSOs associated with the complex. A single filament of
$\sim1.2$ pc in length and $\sim0.09$ pc in width is found to run all along the
coma-shaped cloud. Based on the relationships between the ICMF, CMF, filament
orientations, outflow direction, and the presence of an hour-glass morphology
of the magnetic field, it is likely that the magnetic field had played an
important role in the star formation process in LDN 1157. Combining the proper
motions of the YSOs and the radial velocity of LDN 1147/1158 and another
complex LDN 1172/1174 which is situated $\sim2$\dgr~east of it, we found that
both the complexes are moving collectively toward the Galactic plane. The
filamentary morphology of the east-west segment of LDN 1157 may have formed as
a result of mass lost by ablation due to the interaction of the moving cloud
with the ambient interstellar medium.
