I have an 8 inch Meade Newtonian reflector that I have had since 1978. I have cleaned the mirror once but it still gives great images. I used to do astrophotography with it using my old Pentax SLR, mounting adaptor, and cable exposure control. My scope mount is equatorial with a clock drive and I could take great moon and planet pictures and pictures of some some brighter stars with faster speed film
But I have not had my scope aligned in a very long time, probably 15 years or so when my Pentax bit the dust.
I just got back into astrophotography by joining iTelescope online remote observatory group. It is pricey to schedule enough telescope image capturing time so not sure how long I will be with them. Capturing the several hours of light, red, blue, and green filter needed to make a really good image could be $500. But I have some real good images processed of about 10 Messier objects, mostly galaxies as they are usually brighter.
Are you into astronomy??