In the southern sky, the star Acrux shines brightly — the lowest point of the Southern Cross constellation. It is not a single star but a whole family. New observations revealed that it contains not five, but seven stars bound by gravity, like children holding hands in a circle dance.

Earlier, astronomers knew that at the center of the system there are two bright stars — Alpha-1 and Alpha-2—with three fainter ones orbiting them. Now, by combining light from several telescopes (like assembling a puzzle from pieces of one image), scientists have discerned that Alpha-1 and Alpha-2 are themselves binary. That makes seven stars: four in tight pairs and three on wide orbits.

Such tight groups of stars are born together from a single gas cloud. Their orbits are inclined to each other at a large angle, like carousels spinning in different planes. This suggests the system had a turbulent youth: the stars jostled each other until they settled into their current orbits.

If this system were farther away, we would not be able to see so many stars: they would merge into a single point. This means the Universe may harbor far more multiple stars than we think. We just cannot distinguish them yet.