Question: Is Octuple Star System Possible?

[BlurryVortices]

the Largest stable star system we've ever discovered is Castor, a Sextuplet star system. but is it possible for Octuple Star System to exist? or even higher one like Nonuple Star system?

[Cryo]

THE POSSIBILITIES ARE NEVER ENDING! (Short answer) if six stars can have a stable orbit around each other then there's no reason why seven or more cant....

[Gordon Freeman]

I guess eventually things become unstable in real life, but on paper there isn't really a limit as to how many stars can be in  a system.

[Darvince]

Having a 9 star system is trivially easy, say, Star 1+2 orbit each other, Star 3 orbits the barycenter of 1+2, and 1+2+3 orbit 4, which is orbited by a pair 5+6, and star 7 also orbits 4, and star 8+9 orbit this entire system's barycenter. For an eight star system, you could have some sort of nesting with 4 binary pairs, where 1+2 and 3+4 orbit each other, and 5+6 and 7+8 orbit each other, and all eight stars orbit the common barycenter of the system.

[atomic7732]

i would say an 8 star system is probably pretty possible, as there are two potential 7 star systems. if you have something on the scale of mizar & alcor it might be really possible though could be really unstable

[blotz]

what if all the stars are orbiting each other

[Darvince]

but that's what i just described

[blotz]

no i mean all the stars in the universe

[Cryo]

then there would be a super massive binary center but Where?

[blotz]

the Great Attractor

[Darvince]

it was discovered that our local supercluster is bigger than we thought which completely explains the great attractor

[Physics_Hacker]

Well there are hundreds of stars in open star clusters, which all orbit a barycenter, so...

[omegshi147]

the Largest stable star system we've ever discovered is Castor, a Sextuplet star system. but is it possible for Octuple Star System to exist? or even higher one like Nonuple Star system?

You can count Sag A* as a star system with over 10 stars; just that it is orbiting a black hole. 

[Physics_Hacker]

Uh, make that 4 billion since all the stars in our galaxy orbit Sag A*?

[Darvince]

No, actually, 99.99999% of stars in the milky way don't orbit Sag A* but rather orbit the total mass of the center of the galaxy, and for a majority of those their speed is boosted by dark matter.

[Physics_Hacker]

Okay, but the single largest mass that any one object orbits is Sag A*, other than the combined barycenter...