This is the official caption from ESA's website:
A spiral galaxy, seen close-up. Its core is a round spot that glows intensely bright, crowned by eight long and spikes that extend across the galaxy, artefacts of the telescope’s structure. Its disc is an oval shape with edges made of very thick and cloudy arms of gas and dust, mostly blue but paler and brighter around patches of stars. Wisps of darker dust also fill the inner disc and swirl off the ends of the arms.
I would describe the picture differently:
This is a JWST med infrared MIRI image of galaxy NGC 2566. The galaxy's core is brilliantly bright at these wavelengths. Eight diffraction spikes appear to emerge from the galaxy's core due to the telescope's structure. The spikes are artifacts.
The brilliantly bright core is surrounded by a large lumpy ring (which could be a pair of overlapping spiral arms) that bears every sign of widespread star formation. Actual sites of star formation are seen as bright patches in the large ring. We can't actually see a bar here, but since almost all ring galaxies are barred, we should assume that NGC 2566 is barred, too.
A very fascinating aspect of this galaxy are the long "streamers" that seem to flow from the ring and cross the galaxy's face. Not all the streamers are flowing in the same direction, but the galaxy nevertheless looks "windblown".
NGC 2566 looks quite different in optical light:
This is the "official" description of the ESA/Hubble image from ESA's website:
An oval-shaped spiral galaxy. Its core is a compact, glowing blue spot. A bright bar of light, lined with dark reddish dust, extends horizontally to the edge of the disc. A spiral arm emerges from each end of the bar and follows the edge of the disc, lined with blue and red glowing patches of stars, to the opposite end and a little off the galaxy. Blue stars are scattered between us and the galaxy.
I would describe the Hubble picture differently:
The core of NGC 2566 is a bright blue vortex, likely full of star formation. But the brightness of the core has almost certainly been reduced in order not to overwhelm the rest of the galaxy. The long bar of NGC 2566 is very obvious in optical light. Two long dust lanes are seen in the bar, one on each side of the nucleus, stretching from the nucleus all the way out to the ring.
The ring is full of star formation. We can see many blue star clusters and many red and pink emission nebulas that have been ionized and made to glow because they have recently given birth to very hot young stars.
Note in the closeup of a part of the galaxy below how one pink nebula seems to release a long thick blue fountain of newborn stars:
A fountain of stars appears to be released by a small pink nebula
at upper center in this image. Credit: Shutterstock.
at upper center in this image. Credit: Shutterstock.
That fountain of young stars in NGC 2566 is not entirely unlike the Buckingham Fountain:
My amateur guess is that the strange features of NGC 2566 are caused by interactions with another galaxy. There is a galaxy called IC 2311 that appears to be nearby:
There is another picture that shows you more of NGC 2566. Note that the strange "fountain" is still clearly visible. In this image, we can clearly see that the "ring" of NGC 2566 is a pair of overlapping spiral arms.
NGC 2566. Credit: throughlightandtime
In the picture by throughlightandtime, NGC 2566 resembles iconic barred galaxy NGC 1300:
Ann
