Astronomers reveal first image of the black hole at the heart of our galaxy

I also want to point out that the mass around Sagittarius A* is rapidly shifting which makes getting a sharp image still harder. From the NYT:

Sagittarius A*, the black hole in the Milky Way galaxy, is a harder target. It is less than one-thousandth the mass and size of the M87 hole and, therefore, evolves a thousand times faster. The M87 black hole barely budges during a weeklong observing run, but Sagittarius A* changes its appearance as often as every five minutes.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/12/science/black-hole-photo....

For a small-mass central black hole (CBH), the spin-spin coupling of the CBH and the bulk matter of a relatively small and sparse galaxy is so small that it the orientation of the spin axis is almost unconstrained. That from Earth we look down on the CBH's north pole (right-hand-rule: the bright features appear to circulate counter-clockwise, and there is decent evidence in them that the black hole's spin is in the same direction (i.e., the accretion structure is prograde rather than retrograde)) is probably just a funny coincidence.

M87 and its CBH M87* are much more massive than the Milky Way and its respective CBH Sgr A*, but it M87 a giant elliptical galaxy that is almost circular (as far as we can tell from the highly random orbital motions of constituent parts like hydrogen and molecular gas clouds, resolvable globular and other star clusters, and so forth). So there is essentially no (bulk) galactic spin for M87* to couple to. M87*, the black hole, has significant spin however.

For a galaxy with strong axisymmetry to the point of a thin disc, there are still open questions about spin-spin coupling with a sufficiently massive CBH, under the assumption that the CBH spin and the galactic spin were identical in the early universe and that the CBH spin has not become perturbed (e.g. by black hole mergers, which may change the spin parameter, which translates to a CBH spin axis unaligned with the galactic spin axis, or a counter-rotating CBH, or some combination), and that the galactic spin has not become perturbed (by close-encounters or mergers with other galaxies). There are additional reasons why a jet and counter-jet may not trace out the extended spin axis of a CBH.

Finally, the spin-spin coupling is probably driven by the galactic spin imposing its "will" upon the CBH, rather than the other way around, because of the large mass-ratio and the distribution of mass at significant spatial remove from the CBH. However, there is a chicken/egg conundrum for very large CBHs, since we don't know if they become so huge (principally) primordially or by hierarchical mergers or by some other mechanism. The biggest CBHs may drive the initial angular momentum in the early protogalaxy, and then both the CBH and the later-time bulk galaxy will influence each others' spins. That is, the spin-spin can be correlated without any significant direct linking (in terms of forcing a drifting spin to realign), because the coupling can be arbitrarily weak.

So, we should not be surprised by central black holes spinning differently from their enclosing galaxies. But, we have a lot to learn about your question from further observations of CBHs!

Relatedly, before general relativity, people already knew something was wrong with Newton's theory of gravity from observing the orbit of Mercury, which didn't follow the theory accurately. At that time Mercury, being so close to the Sun, was an extreme condition that showed the flaws in the theory.

The fact that general relativity continues to hold up to every observation we can make is remarkable.

JWST is an infrared scope pretty much specifically so it can see through dust clouds.

Yeah, we know. We've already seen this image.