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No the 8" dob is probably the most popular beginners scope. I had one and lots of visual astronomers started off that way.
Magnification is often misunderstood. A more powerful eyepiece (for example a 9mm versus a 25mm) will not make things brighter only bigger. But that is quite often not needed as many deep space objects are already large. Open clusters often exceed the moon in size in the sky so you don't actually need much magnification to view them.
A scope is primarily about gathering light so dim objects become visible and that is primarily a function of aperture. In fact for many dime objects magnification can make them harder to see as you spread the light over a larger area, making it dimmer. Of course magnification also can darken the sky background, increasing the contrast so making them easier to see. That is why we have a range of eyepieces so we can select the eyepiece that suits an object best.
For you reference in your 8" it has a focal length of 1200mm so the magnifications for the EPs you ill have will be 1200/25 = 48x , 1200/15 = 80x and 1200/9 = 133x.
Malcolm
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