The title of this chapter in the new edition is misleading.  It's about MOST stars,  from the tiny White Dwarfs through the stars on the Main Sequence to the incredible Red Giants and Supergiants.  The subtitle, A Field Guide to the Stars would be better as the main title.

Chapter 17 contains most of the basis of what's known about main sequence stars, except for topics already covered in Chapter 16 while we were studying the sun, and nuclear fusion in high-mass stars which is in Chapter 20.

Chapter 17 could be thought of as three chapters. The first, or part I, would be sections 17.1-17.2, and could be entitled "Distances, Magnitudes and Luminosities." Part II would be sections 17.3 - 17.6, and could be entitled "Temperatures, Spectroscopy, Sizes, and the Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram." Part III would be section 17.7, and should be entitled "Masses and Lifetimes."

Of the whole chapter, the only sections I would skip are the Discovery and More Precisely inserts, and I'm only skipping them for lack of time or because the math details are beyond what we're doing in AS151.  You may find them helpful to read even though I won't lecture about them.

Section 17.2, Luminosity and Apparent Brightness, is treated in depth in the lab section. Some very straight forward examples will be done in class and may be on quiz, but only simple examples. You should remember that brightness (intensity or flux) is propotional to luminosity divided by distance squared, and that a difference of 5 magnitudes is equivalent to a factor of 100 in brightness.

Section 17.3, Stellar Temperatures, is quite important background for the lab section.

Review And Discussion:

All good questions!  In general, your answers can be brief and not too detailed.

Conceptual Self-Test:

Number 7 is too tricky.  It's false because all known stellar masses have been determined from observations of binary-star systems.

Skip number 15.

Problems. Only look at a few:  Number 1: only answer the first question. Use ratios for number 5, The answer to number 6 is that A is further away because it has a smaller absolute magnitude, and it is10 times further because 5 magnitudes difference gives a difference in brightness of a factor of 100, and the square root of 100 is 10.