Astronomers in Europe and the United States say they have spotted the farthest and oldest galaxy ever found, a star cluster 13.2 billion light years away.

Light reaching Earth today from galaxy MACS 1149-JD is truly ancient, they reported in the British journal Nature.

A zoomed-in image from the Dark Energy Camera of the barred spiral galaxy NGC 1365, in the Fornax cluster of galaxies, which lies about 60 million light years from Earth.

The rays were sent out 490 million years after the Big Bang that created the Universe some 13.7 billion years ago.

"We estimate that it (the galaxy) formed less than 200 million years after the Big Bang," the team said.