Astrophysics question

Alpha Centauri has 3 suns. Alpha Centauri C (Proxima Centauri) has an exoplanet.

You can look up the info on Algol here: http://www.stellar-database.com/Scripts/search_star.exe?Name=algol .

A and B are close enough to be exchanging mass. C comes as close as .25 AU to A & B's center of gravity. Which means a stable planetary orbit couldn't be more than .06 AU from the star. C is an F2 star, which is hotter and bigger than Sol. Mercury is .39 AU from Sol. A planet orbiting Algol C would be basically liquid rock.

Sorry.

Why not craft planetary orbits around the region of collective mass of the three interlocked stars/suns? At an appropriate AU distance, establish a "Goldilocks Zone" for your habitable planets and populate as you deem fit. The gravitational anomalies inherent in a triple-star system may induce varying orbital paths for the planets (protracted/abbreviated seasons, electromagnetic diversity, etc.). Let your imagination roam free -- have some fun with it!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumstellar_habitable_zone

The film Pitch Black featured a trinary star system. It can definitely work, and I don't think it even needs much explanation in the story.

Sooooo this is a super specific question. And I'm gonna chip in with Dennis, and say that, from a Real Science perspective, this doesn't really work. The stars are too big, and too close, for there to realistically be an Earth-like planet hanging out there. A and B are snuggled in so tight they're sharing star goop.

This leaves you with a couple of options.

A) Cartman's Solution: You do what you want, and tell us and the scientific community to F off, and put your story on a livable planet in a solar system you call Algol that has two suns that do the things you're used to Sol doing here.

B) Travel Agent: You pick (Or invent) a binary star system that could have a livable planet where physics works like it actually does, which from a very brief glance suggests you'd have an A day, then night, then a B day, then night, then an A day, dividing a standard 'day' into quadrants instead of halves like we do here. (Other options are available, since binary stars have lots of possible configurations, but that was the one that caught my eye because the sketch made it look like the suns revolved around the locked plant, which was stationary. I now very much wish I had bookmarked it.)

C) All New Cast: You do use Algol, and you do use real physics, BUT you invent a species that evolved on Dennis' liquid rock planet. How? No idea, spitballing here, but they're already magic so why not? Maybe something that looks like a traditional image of a fire elemental, or a djinn, or a demon.

As to the question about whether describing three suns in the sky is too much for sci-fi readers, John Carter has 11 books, several comics, multiple video and board games, and two movies. Moby Dick is famed classical literature, and is contains a (I kid you not) 20 page sequence of slaughtering a whale and what they're going to do with all that blubber. Tolkien devoted an entire chapter to describing Tom Bombadil's house, a fairly minor character. People will read anything, if you can give them a reason to.

HOH-KAY. You gotta stop asking questions that take me down physics rabbit holes, kid.

In multiple star systems (of which triples are the most common) they basically follow one of two patterns for gravitational orbit. (We are not considering optical systems, because Algol isn't one and anyway they're not really star systems, humans just can't get over being the center of the universe.) They either have a chaotic type n-body pattern, most common in nebulae, or a nested hierarchy of 2-body orbits. Algol is the hierarchical kind, which is good because it's WAY easier to explain. So, A and B are the big ones that are close together, and they spin around each other. Think of ballroom dancers- they grab onto each other and go twirling around, with the guy holding mostly still in the middle and the girl doing most of the spinning. C, though, is orbiting their orbit. He's some guy walking in a circle around your dancers, watching them.

What does this mean for your planet? That's gonna depend on where you put it in relation to the stars. It sort of sounds like you're going with Option A, physics does what you say it does, and you want to put your planet in between A and B. Which involves some CRAZY math, but abruptly makes your job WAY easier, because llawrence already cited a handy visual aid- that's roughly the arrangement used in the film Pitch Black. To save you some time, I'll tell you that the effect is that the sun never sets. The planet, rotating on it's axis, orbits A in what you would think of as the normal way. But since B is rotating roughly in synch, there is no true night, just periods of dusk-like dimness. Since C is off doing it's own thing, it has a more erratic appearance schedule, and doesn't really effect the solar cycle much. It would be visible for a lengthy period, a week or a month or whatever works for you, then be gone for something like three times as long. It would also be dim, like seeing the moon during the day.

Of course, all of that changes if you move the planet or vary the orbits of the planet and B, but I'm going to be strong and not describe all of the options. It would take a very long time.