Celestron c8 vs c9.25

Is there enough of a visual difference between a c8 and a c9.25 to make the switch viewing under fairly light polluted skies??

Some, but you get a MUCH more noticeable gain by going to a C11 which is not overwhelmingly heavier or more expensive.

Hi Victor, yes the C9.25XLT will see a little deeper for dso's even in polluted skies, I had one here on LI 5 yeras ago but the mount that it came with was the newer CG5ASGT and thats were IMO it was undermounted. The C9.25 was 22lbs stripped, just the plain ota without anything on it so once you get a good diagonal/visual back/finder and some ep's your up around 25lbs. I now have a C8 with XLT on the same mount, its rock solid plus it takes maybe an hour to cool compared to the C9.25 which was closer to 1.5>2 hours. I also owned a IM M603 on planets/lunar/double stars that scope did a much better job on handling hi power veiws when condition were steady but did lack on dos's with the light pollution we have around here but bring that scope to a dark site and the contrast was better than both celestrons. I think I might go next to the IM M703 which might be the happy ground giving enough size for dso's but slightly better optics than the sct's plus the IM MCT's focusing system is in a different leage. the only drawback is the MCT's do take longer to cool before the scope can reach its best performance. In my own finding I have had the M603 up around stupid hi powers around 500X were the C8 tops out around 400X and the C9.25 tops at around 450X, now the 603 was a 6" scope and although the image was dim by a small amount the detail was sharper to the eye. On most nigts out here I would say 200X is the max but those few night a year we get the scope with better optics will seem to deliver more detail.
regards
Jim