It's an artifact of the mirror design (a hex of hex mirrors).
It mainly shows up in overexposed images - but in a deep field like this they have many stars (and galaxies) in the shot, so they have to compromise exposure, which means that the bright stars (and galaxies) get way overexposed.
You can compensate for the effect to an extent with post-processing, but these images haven't had that done.
It's an artifact of the mirror design (a hex of hex mirrors).
It mainly shows up in overexposed images - but in a deep field like this they have many stars (and galaxies) in the shot, so they have to compromise exposure, which means that the bright stars (and galaxies) get way overexposed.
You can compensate for the effect to an extent with post-processing, but these images haven't had that done.
Correct, some are clearly galaxies like our own.
YOu forgot the word "supposedly" in your sentence.