(abridged) We report the discovery of a previously unnoticed member of the
Centaurus A Group, NGC 5011C. While the galaxy is a well known stellar system
listed with a NGC number its true identity remained hidden because of
coordinate confusion and wrong redshifts in the literature. NGC 5011C attracted
our attention since, at a putative distance of 45.3 Mpc, it would be a peculiar
object having a very low surface brightness typical of a dwarf galaxy, and at
the same time having the size of an early-type spiral or S0 galaxy. To confirm
or reject this peculiarity, our immediate objective was to have the first
reliable measurement of its recession velocity. The observations were carried
out with EFOSC2 at the 3.6m ESO telescope. We found that NGC 5011C has indeed a
low redshift of v_sun=647+/-96 km/sec and thus is a nearby dwarf galaxy rather
than a member of the distant Centaurus cluster as believed for the past 23
years. Rough distance estimates based on photometric parameters also favor this
scenario. As a byproduct of our study we update the redshift for NGC 5011B at
v_sun=3227+/-50 km/sec. Applying population synthesis techniques, we find that
NGC 5011B has a luminosity-weighted age of 4+/-1 Gyr and a solar metallicity,
and that the luminosity-weighted age and metallicity of NGC 5011C are 0.9+/-0.1
Gyr and 1/5 solar. Finally we estimate a stellar mass of NGC 5011C comparable
to that of dwarf spheroidal galaxies in the Local Group.Comment: 13 pages, 6 figures, accepted by the Astronomical Journa