1. What is Astrobiology?
2. Do we know what we are looking for? Can we define life? Why water?
3. The cosmic zoo: from our Solar System to distant galaxies
4. A short history of Astrobiology: from the Persians and Epicureans to discovering exoplanets and the Kepler space telescope
5. The tools of science: measurement, questions and hypotheses. Statistics, good and evil. How science differs from journal report
6. A few units necessary for Astrobiology
7. The Habitable Zone of our solar system and of other star systems
8. Our star - the Sun
9. Is Earth special?
10. The evolution of life on Earth, from prokaryotes to Homo sapiens, and its effects on Earth
11. The role of an atmosphere: climate and habitability
12. The potential for life on the terrestrial planets: Mercury, Venus and Mars
13. The potential for life on the outer planets: Jupiter, Saturn, and their moons: Europa, Enceladus and Titan
14. The small bodies in the Solar System: carbonaceous meteorites, asteroids and comets, and their possible impact on life
15. The quest for exoplanets: detecting planetary systems around other stars
16. Biosignatures
17. How different could alien life be?
18. Stellar types and their habitable zones
19. The structure of our galaxy, the Milky Way and other galaxies: is there a galactic habitable zone?
20. Cosmology and life: "long long ago, in a galaxy far far away" - from the Big Bang to the anthropic principle
21. The chances of finding extraterrestrial Complex and Intelligent life: SETI. The Drake equation and interstellar communication
22. Can we reach the stars? Space flight and advanced propulsion techniques
23. The Fermi paradox: where are all the aliens?
Glossary
Index

Dr Amri Wandel, Astrophysicist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, has created and taught for 25 years the course "Astrophysics and Life in the Universe" to science and non-science undergraduate programs, each with about a hundred students annually, and a similar course at the astronomy program at UCLA. He frequently gives public talks and media interviews on astrobiology. His main research has been on active galaxies and massive black holes, and in the last years on astrobiology, in particular about the habitability of exoplanets. Wandel has published over 100 scientific papers and the books The Cosmos and Us (in Esperanto 2001, 2017, 2022) and Astrophysics and Life in the Universe (in Hebrew, 2022). He is Chairman of the Israel Society for Astrobiology and the Origin of Life (ILASOL), and a member of the International Astronomical Union's commission of astrobiology.

Dr Joseph Gale, Biologist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, carried out research and served for some years as consultant to NASA's CELSS project (Controlled Environment Life Support Systems). From there, he became interested in the exobiology program, later called astrobiology. Gale has built and taught a program on "The Astrobiology of Planet Earth", an elective for third-year science students, which over the last decade has attracted some one hundred students each year. He has lectured at numerous national and international conferences. In recent years, he has been invited to participate in astrobiology seminars of the University of Stockholm and the International Space University. Gale has published some 100+ refereed papers and authored and coauthored four books, including Plants in Saline Environments (Springer-Verlag 1975) and Astrobiology of Earth (OUP 2009).