First, the filamentary, shredded material the pixel people have assigned the color red. This is hydrogen gas and dust, the so-called
molecular clouds from which stars form. Stars are being born there now, but the gas actually flouresces red, the image analysts have picked red to call our attention to this.

Second, are the two blue spiral arms composed of millions of individual stars–like a Milky Way viewed from above. This false blue color has also been arbitrarily assigned by the analysts, since we are really looking at an IR image here. But those are massive, hot, blue short-lived young stars which will burn out in just a few million years. Note how they trace the red spiral arms, but lag behind them somewhat, Incidentally many more dim red dwarfs than bright hot blue giants are born in these stellar nurseries, but you can’t see them. Those little blue specks are big blue giants, the dwarfs outnumber the giants a million to one, but Webb can’t detect detect them over extragalactic distances. The dwarfs are invisible, too faint to show up.

The bright red/white lumps in the spiral arms are regions of active star formation, illuminated from within by new stars. Some of them may be globular clusters, formed during the galaxy’s early days, and orbiting randomly about its center. The stars with diffraction spikes are foreground stars in our own galaxy. The bright white dot in the center of the spiral is a tiny but dense cluster of stars orbiting close around the black hole at the center (which is, of course, invisible). The fuzzy blue dots are new, young open clusters, dominated by hot blue stars.

Keep in mind, this is an astronomical photograph. It encompasses an enormous dynamic range, so it has been processed (the darkroom term is “dodged”) so that the underexposed outer regions are enhanced to bring out detail, but the inner parts have been suppressed to avoid them overexposing the center.

Questions? I am surprised at the shredded appearance of the red material in the spiral arms. A filamentary structure is often seen in these clouds, but I’ve never seen it this strong before. Turbulence? Shock Waves and ripples from solar winds and supernovae explosions? I don’t know. I also seem to see a lot of linear features bisecting the arms at random angles. Subjective like the Martian canals? Actual physical things or perceptive processes? I don’t know. Every time we get new data there are always more new questions than there are answers to the old ones.

Also, keep in mind this is a snapshot in time. Galaxies evolve, they change over time, sometimes catastrophically. But the time scales are vast. They are comparable to geological or biological evolution. If we took another picture a million years from now, it wouldn’t look that much different.

Compare this image with a lower res and different color palette Hubble image of the same object,

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d0/PESSTO_Snaps_Supernova_in_Messier_74.jpg/450px-PESSTO_Snaps_Supernova_in_Messier_74.jpg