  We have recently announced that the General Catalogue of Variable Stars
enters the stage of its fifth, purely electronic edition (GCVS 5.1). Recently,
we have incorporated a new, completely revised version for 1408 variable stars
in the constellation of Centaurus into the GCVS 5.1. Working on this revision,
we used current possibilities of data mining, suggested new variability types
for many variable stars, found new light elements for a large number of
periodic variables. This paper describes the work fulfilled during the
preparation of the GCVS 5.1 version for Centaurus, discusses in detail a number
of cases most significant astrophysically.
