Alas...

My C8 is no more...The corrector was broken in an (obviously) unfortunate accident. The optics in this scope were never really as good as I expected, having to do (I suspect) with the individual whom I bought it from having taken it apart to "clean it". At the time I bought the scope, I knew very little about SCs so really did not think to star test or compare.

All this is a moot point now that it is broken, sooo....

Is there anything I can do with the mirrors that are left over to make some sort of a project scope?

I have quite a few accesories for this scope, would I be better off selling them and getting something different for visual/imaging? (Orion imaging newt comes to mind).

Looking for opinions, thanks for reading!

Sorry to hear about your corrector plate mishap Tony.

I had my 90’s era Celestar 8 SCT side-by-side with a smaller premium Mak-Cass last night looking at Saturn and noticing how the C8’s image was showing more detail and brightness. A good C8 can perform well if its optics have not been tampered with as yours may have been. Since you already have a lot of C8 accessories, replacing your defective C8 with a well-performing one would be one good approach.

If you want to get into mirror testing, the primary mirror may be usable as a Hindle Sphere to test convex optics.

- Tom

As long as the secondary and primary are still intact, you can probably find a replacement corrector on the used market for not much money:

http://www.astronomy-mall.com/astro.parts.outlet/list.htm

Worst case, they may be interested in buying your OTA parts.