Above is the appearance of the bright pair in a 6-inch at 270x under excellent seeing conditions.  North is down and east is to the right.

The diagram on the right illustrates the apparent motion of the two stars relative to the brighter star, as if it were held motionless.  North is up and east is to the left in the diagram.  The fainter component appears to orbit the brighter in a clockwise direction.  The stars were closest together in the late 1960's and will continue to widen until the end of the 21st century.  The average physical separation of these two stars is 118 Astronomical Units (1.0 AU is the mean distance from the sun to the earth). 

A third component (C) is an 8.8 magnitude star which lies 73" distant.  This star is also physically bound, very slowly orbiting the main pair. 

Each of the three visible stars in this system is itself a double; there are at least 6 stars total here.  Each of these close pairs orbit much too closely to separate in even the largest of telescopes.  We know of the existence of these stars from spectroscopic measurements.  Rather than a single set of absorption lines from a single star, two sets of lines are superimposed on one another.  The relative motions of the orbiting stars results in a periodic shift of each set of absorption lines.  Such measurements can tell us a great deal about stars we can't even see as separate entities. 

The fainter "C" component is the variable star YY Gem, an eclipsing binary.  The two stars orbit about one another every 19 hours, 32 minutes.  The orbit is seen edge-on, so twice each orbit one of the stars passes in front of the other.  When this happens the single star we see at this location can fade from 8.9 magnitude to 9.6.  One of the component stars is also a flare star, which can brighten dramatically from time to time.