NGC 2681 has possibly three bars, with a relatively large bar at the outer side. Because the galaxy is seen nearly face-on, the bar like structures cannot be projection effects.[3] From Earth based observations, in B-I images the galaxy showed neither grand design spirals nor a ring, but only two symmetrical spiral arms starting from the end of the primary bar. In Hα images some HII regions were observed in the spiral arms.[4] A dust spiral is seen in Hubble space telescope images extending to the centre.[5] The lack of stellar gradient in the central regions and the data from Faint Object Camera, Faint Object Spectrograph and International Ultraviolet Explorer indicate that the galaxy had a starburst event approximately one billion years ago, possibly after the tidal interaction with another galaxy, which involved all the galaxy.[2]
Dynamical modeling of the velocity dispersions suggests that NGC 2681 hosts a supermassive black hole whose upper mass limit was set at 6×107M⊙.[2] As observed from Chandra X-ray Observatory, NGC 2681 displayed three stellar sources within the central kiloparsec of the galaxy. The active galactic nucleus had luminosity 1.8 × 1038 erg/s, which accounts for approximately the 20% of the total luminosity of the central kiloparsec.[6]
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