- NGC 663 is an open cluster within our own Milky Way galaxy. It is over 6,800 light years from Earth, so the photons from it reaching your eye in a telescope left that cluster about the time circular ditches - such as the Goseck Circle - were being dug as solar observatories in the 5th millenium BCE. NGC 663 is stil considered a young open cluster, with an estimated age around 20 million years. Here is how to locate it.