  We present a comparison of SCUBA-2 850-$\mu$m and Herschel 70--500-$\mu$m
observations of the L1495 filament in the Taurus Molecular Cloud with the goal
of characterising the SCUBA-2 Gould Belt Survey (GBS) data set. We identify and
characterise starless cores in three data sets: SCUBA-2 850-$\mu$m, Herschel
250-$\mu$m, and Herschel 250-$\mu$m spatially filtered to mimic the SCUBA-2
data. SCUBA-2 detects only the highest-surface-brightness sources, principally
detecting protostellar sources and starless cores embedded in filaments, while
Herschel is sensitive to most of the cloud structure, including extended
low-surface-brightness emission. Herschel detects considerably more sources
than SCUBA-2 even after spatial filtering. We investigate which properties of a
starless core detected by Herschel determine its detectability by SCUBA-2, and
find that they are the core's temperature and column density (for given dust
properties). For similar-temperature cores, such as those seen in L1495, the
surface brightnesses of the cores are determined by their column densities,
with the highest-column-density cores being detected by SCUBA-2. For roughly
spherical geometries, column density corresponds to volume density, and so
SCUBA-2 selects the densest cores from a population at a given temperature.
This selection effect, which we quantify as a function of distance, makes
SCUBA-2 ideal for identifying those cores in Herschel catalogues that are
closest to forming stars. Our results can now be used by anyone wishing to use
the SCUBA-2 GBS data set.
