Good luck with that!
1. Be wary of bottlenecks. With that many players, in dungeon settings, it is possible for the party to have difficulty getting past a bottleneck, resulting in combat that only includes one or two participants while the others are stuck outside the room. Watch for these situations and adjust enemy tactics/Room size accordingly to try and avoid them.
2. Oh dear, Eight players. NO SOLO ENEMIES! I can only imagine how quickly they'll be brought low by the party. You can probably give most solo encounters at least 2-3 combat wall mooks and maybe a level or just the advanced template added on. Highly consider giving max HP to any 'significant' opponent if you wish them to stand out.
3. A getle massaging to remove additional NPC combat help. The party is not likely to need it and another character might just slow battle down. Up to you though.
4. When it seems possible, doubling the amount of enemies in an encounter or just in general throughout an area should have the general effect of keeping the challenge correct and the EXP in the zone you want.
5. Honestly, with that many characters, It should be super easy to find one of them who can make some kind of connection with one of the side-quest peoples. Might be helpful to make a list of all the side quest NPCs and introduce them as early as you can. For example, when the party were looking into the possibility of either selling or upgrading the clockwork servant, I had them go straight to Morgamer Pug. After they had taken down a Scarzni Gang, the tower girls, I had Theryn Raccas meet with them to try and ally with this group who had just taken out part of the competition anyway. When that went alright, I've basically had Theryn, in addition to his own side quest, be a 'fixer' for the other side quests if the PCs hadn't already formed some kind of bond with that NPC.
Now, I run with three players, and aside from an unlucky fight with a wizard and mooks they've done fairly well. So 8 PCs should be able to withstand some rather significant increases to the enemies or challenge.
If you haven't read the Guide on Creating Challenging Encounters, go do so NOW. The link is HERE.
I run quite a few games with up to 7 characters (8 sometimes if you count Spivey or some of the other NPCs in our Jade Regent campaign) so I have an idea of what you're getting into. I'm also running a SS game with 6 characters. I would urge you to have a No Pets rule. So, no Animal Companions, no Eidolons (and no Summoners in general tbh). They drastically slow down the game. I'd also houserule that if someone casts Summon Monster/Nature's Ally, they'd better have the rules ready to go with the critters show up or you're going to go ballistic.
On that note, appoint one of your players to Co-DM (he can still run his PC). He's in charge of running relevant NPCs, keeping up with Bad Guy HPs, looking up rules, etc. Consider getting a Chess clock and set it to say, 15 seconds. Folks have to state what they're doing in that time or lose their action. They don't necessarily have to complete their action, but they had better state it rather than dithering, etc.
Hopefully, you have a full copy of Hero Lab so you can make all the PC character sheets. Keep these on a Google drive and keep open those players who are a bit inexperienced. That way, you can roll for them when need be, or simply bark out what they need to add to any particular dice roll.
Be liberal with Take 10 & Take 20. Avoid complexity where possible and encourage characters choices that are straightforward. Have fun with Shattered Star, with the right group, it's loads of fun.
My honest suggestion: Find another DM and split your party down the middle.
Dealing with a group this size creates many (nearly) insurmountable issues that will take away from everyone's game experience. Roleplaying: It's terribly difficult to include all 8 people, and if you manage to succeed, it takes forever. Combat: The DM has to buff up either quantity of quality of monsters - preferably both. This means more actions on your side of the table, in addition to double the actions on the other side of the table. Also, this suffers from the same problem as roleplaying - it's hard to keep everyone's attention when they make an action every 15 minutes instead of every 5 minutes. Focus: Players lose focus when they act so slowly - in combat and in roleplaying. This compounds the problem to the Nth degree.
I currently have a group of 5 that I'm running Shattered Star for - we got through more than half of the first book (20+ combat encounters, while evading 10+ encounters) in only three 6 hour sessions. I expect to finish book 1 in another two session. With a group of 8, I'd expect that time to be doubled, at a bare minimum - tripled or worse if/when players start to lose focus. For reference, a friend of mine is running Skull & Shackles for 7 players and it took us 11 sessions to finish the first book - over twice as long.
Honestly, if it is AT ALL POSSIBLE, split the group.
Which AP?
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I'm currently nearing the end of the first book, and while I have a small party of 3-5 depending on the week, i've run much larger games. I will say that eve. With only 4 people the players are tripping over themselves to get into the fight.
You're going to have a few big challenges ahead of you, and most have already been covered by others.
Combat and time:
Combat tends to take the most time, and in this scenario there is more combat than usual. Combined with 8 players taking actions each round and the need to raise the CR of encounters this AP is going to take time. Let your players know this up front, discourage people from taking companions or familiars, and be fairly strict about making sure each player knows what they want to do by the time thier turn comes up. I tend to give each player 15 to 20 seconds to decide the PC's actions and then inform them that their PC is delaying if the player still hasn't decided.
When it comes to the encounters themselves, I think you'll be served best by only adding enough enemies to allow your melee players to engage. The rest of the CR should be from templates, advanced rules, or character classes. The fewer actions, stats, and hit point pools you have to worry about as the gm the better. Fewer monsters will also cause fewer bottlenecks in this already cramped dungeon crawl. Just don't add the feindish template to the centipede swarm. It's too mean.
The Dungeon:
This place is riddled with 10ft wide hallways, oddly angled rooms, and blind corners. You may want to play around with the map some in order to widen some hallways and doors. I would strongly suggest giving extra space in areas B15, B31, B43, C9, C10, D10, and D11.
Roleplaying: There are enough hooks that the people who want to roleplay can, and this module might as well be tailor made for anyone who just wants to kill things. Players who engage in RP will be rewarded, and everyone else will have several people willing to do the talking. I don't think you'll have too many problems here. Just be able to recognize a bored player and act on it. Speaking of... Normaly I ban extraneous internet searches in my games, but with large groups, as long as the active player isn't distracted, and everyone is able to keep up with events, I don't mind.
If Terisha, the Tower Girl spying on and looking for Natalya, saw 8 characters go into Natalya's hideout. Do you think she would still try to confront the PCs for Natalya, or do you think she would try to go get back up?
Probably depends on the condition that the party exits the building. If they exit a bit beat up, she'd probably still try. Of course, for a DM upping the challenge, she'd have more minions to make her more confident too. And those thugs are decent challenges, at low levels they have a high AC and a very steady accuracy and damage amount.
One big big big thing about 8 players is the fact that, with twice as many actions per round on the player's side, you're going to have to compensate for the npcs - and with the restrictions on space, you have a tough challenge ahead of you.
I'm currently doing the same thing as you - I'm running an 8-player playby post of this game (modified setting where the players are working for Karzoug) - and I'm also currently running a solo test game with 8 PCs on Roll20. So far, my test-campaign is in the Crows nest, while my actual campaign is at Zograthy's.
Both campaigns had relatively little issue with the first encounter - the Paradox box. I had beefed up the encounter quite a bit by adding four additional traps (debuffs) and threw in two advanced Grimples and two tooth fairies in addition to the two pugwampies. With the fey spreading out through the manor, the 8 PCs had an easier time battling them, rather than having them all stuck in one room.
So far, in the Crow, I've actually found it to be relatively alright as far as spacing goes - with the corridors being 10ft wide, even 8 players aren't extremely pressed for space. Compared to Natalya's place, its a fresh of breath air (Especially due to the absense of sewage.)
@Laveral: I beefed up Terisha's entourage with 6 level 1 rogue thugs and a level 2 rogue/fighter thug - although it was a very tough fight for my Test PCs, after having thoroughly had their asses kicked by the gauntlet that was Natalya's place, they survived without too many unconscious players. Terisha escaped, though, having been sniping (and throwing pellet grenades) down from Natalya's roof.
If you want, I can message you about the sweeping changes I'm making to the first adventure - although you won't want the stuff about Karzoug and the Cyphermages, nor the heavy, unnatural winter that has hit the world in my campaign, the rest may come in handy.
I would also like to add that my Play-by-Post group actually has a total of 13 characters - 8 PCs, four NPC mercenaries (level 3 Warriors), and one assistant NPC (Who happens to be the only one with Knowledge(Local)).
Not to mention one of my characters, a Gnome Juju Oracle, fully plans on animating undead when hes of level - and since he uses Wordcasting, he can do so for free.