The Triple Star System, Gliese 667.

 Gliese 667A                   GlieseCb and GlieseCc                                               Gliese  667B                           Gliese 667C                                                                                                

Gliese 667 is a triple star system located 23.2 light years away from Earth, in the constellation of Scorpio. The Three stars, Gliese A, Gliese B and Gliese C all have a mass smaller than our own Sun and can be seen by the naked eye which appears as a single faint star in the night sky. The two brightest stars in the system, Gliese 667A and Gliese 667B is a binary star system, orbiting each other, separated by a distance of 12 AU. AU is a astonomical unit which tells us the distance from Earth to the Sun. So 12 AU, would represent roughly, 93,000,000 x 12 to calculate the distance in miles or 150,000,000 x 12 to calculate the distance in kilometers. The closest the pair of stars ever come to each other is about 5 AU, the orbit between the two stars takes about 43 years to complete. The third star in the system Gliese 667C orbits around the binary stars at a distance around 230 AU. The largest star in the system Gliese 667A is slightly smaller than our own Sun but has roughly the same volume of mass and is catagorised as being a brown dwarf star. Gliese 667B is the second largest star in the system, containing 70% the size and mass of our own Sun. Gliese 667C is the smallest star in the system and is roughly three times smaller in mass when compaired to our Sun. Gliese 667C is a red dwarf star or an M-type star with a outer atmosphere temperature of around 3,700 kelvin. Two planets have been found orbiting in the vicinity of Gliese 667C. The extrasolar planets orbiting Gliese C are named Gliese Cb and Gliese Cc. When on the surface of the extrasolar planet Gliese 667cc, Gliese 667C would look 3 times bigger in comparison when veiwing the Sun from the surface of Earth.