Abstract Some of the confusions concerning quaternions as they are employed in spacecraft attitude work are discussed. The order of quaternion multiplication is discussed in terms of its historical development and its consequences for the quaternion imaginaries. The different formulations for the quaternions are also contrasted. It is shown that the three Hamilton imaginaries cannot be interpreted as the basis of the vector space of physical vectors but only as constant numerical column vectors, the autorepresentation of a physical basis.
The nature of the quaternion
The Journal of the Astronautical Sciences ; 56 , 3 ; 359-373
2008-09-01
15 pages
Article (Journal)
Electronic Resource
English
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