French and Swiss astronomers say they have detected the farthest galaxy ever seen.

The galaxy, dubbed Abell 1835 IR1916, is 13.23 billion light years from Earth, France's National Centre for Scientific Research said.

Before this the farthest known galaxy, whose discovery was announced in mid-February, was said to be 13 billion light years away.

"It is as if we are seeing the childhood of the galaxy," Roser Pello, a member of the team that found it, was quoted as saying. "It's a galaxy that is starting to form."

The universe, thought to have begun with the Big Bang some 13.7 billion years ago, would have been a mere 470 million years old when the newly observed galaxy formed, the research centre said.

"If we compare the age of the universe to that of a person aged 75, we are facing a baby aged two-and-a-half," the centre said in a statement.

The observation was made with the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile. An intervening cluster of galaxies served as a giant, natural magnifying glass, making it possible to detect it.