I apologize in advance for a spoiler, but I kind of have to spoil it to ask my question in general. Here goes:
When Starkiller Base unleashes the energy beam to destroy the resistance (or rather the Galactic Senate), it somehow split into 5 individual beams to destroy the 5 planets in the Hosnian System. I only knew of Hosnian Prime for a name. I'm not sure where Starkiller Base was at the time, but people were able to see the beam travel as well and it moved really fast.
So my question is: Was it 1 beam and split or did it launch 5 separate beams and it just looked like it was 1 beam, until it entered the Hosnian System? My observation was it was a one shot kind of weapon, but it fed off a star as well. So, even though it had plenty of energy to siphon away from the star, it could only still fire only once and then have to cool down???