The March issue of Sky and Telescope has a feature story on WD 1145+017, a white dwarf star in Virgo 570 ly away.

Observations from the Kepler orbiting telescope have found evidence of a disintegrating planet, discovered by transit observations similar to those used to discover the family of planets around Trappist-1.

The transit evidence means that this star must also have its ecliptic lined up with Sol, because, after all, that is how the transit technique works. There is nothing unusual about this, stars whose planetary orbital planes are aligned with earth are the only ones who can be studied with this technique.

What is really amazing is that this object is also very near OUR ecliptic, in fact, only 1/4 degree (15') away from it. This is the same synchronicity I discussed in my comments about the Trappist-1 planetary system.

I'm convinced there is no physical reason why this should be so, it is just a coincidence (actually, a second coincidence). But there it is.

For the transit method to work, we have to be on the star's ecliptic. But there is no physical reason it needs to be on ours. And these two events have been reported only a few days apart.

OOOO-weeeeee-oooooo...