Parametric representation of orthogonal matrices It is a known fact that if $X$ is a skew-symmetric matrix, then $e^X$ is an orthogonal matrix. 
Is it also true the opposite, ie that any orthogonal matrix admits a representation like $e^X$ for some $X$ skew-symmetric?
If not, is there a way to parametrize the space of the orthogonal matrices? With this I mean, a function $f$ that takes some parameters $\Theta$ and returns a matrix $O$ such that:


*

*$f(\Theta)=O$ is orthogonal

*If $O$ is orthogonal, there exists a set of parameters $\Theta$ s.t. $f(\Theta)=O$?


Does the topic get easier if we focus on orthonormal matrices?
 A: As you said, if $X$ is a skew-symmetric matrix then $e^X$ is orthogonal, and precisely $e^X$ is a special orthogonal matrix, i.e. with determinant equal to $+1$:
$$\det(e^X)=e^{\operatorname{Tr}(X)}=e^0=1$$
Conversely, for $O\in SO_n(\Bbb R)$, there is an orthonormal basis in which $O$ is similar to
$$S=\operatorname{diag}(I_p,R(\theta_1),\ldots,R(\theta_s))$$
where 
$$R(\theta_i)=\begin{pmatrix}\cos\theta_i&-\sin\theta_i\\\sin\theta_i&\cos\theta_i\end{pmatrix}$$
Moreover, we have $\exp(J_i)=R(\theta_i)$ with
$$J_i=\begin{pmatrix}0&-\theta_i\\\theta_i&0\end{pmatrix}$$
so we define the skew-symmetric matrix
$$A=\operatorname{diag}(0_p, J_1,\ldots,J_s)$$
and we get 
$e^A=S$.
A: Every orthogonal matrix with determinant $1$ has the form
$\exp(X)$ with $X$ skew-symmetric. Another representation of orthogonal
matrices is the Cayley parameterisation: $(I+X)(I-X)^{-1}$ is orthogonal
whenever $X$ is skew-symmetric. This produces all orthogonal matrices
of determinant $1$ which do not have $-1$ as an eigenvalue.
A: As Lord Shark of the Unknown already told, the answer is negative for $O(n,\mathbb{R})$, but it is affirmative for $SO(n,\mathbb{R})$. That the answer is negative in the case of $O(n,\mathbb{R})$ follows from the fact that it is not connected, whereas the space of all skew-symmetric matrices is (together with the fact that the exponential map is continuous).
Actually, if $K$ is a compact and connected matrix group and if$$\mathfrak{k}=\left\{X\in M(n,\mathbb{R})\,|\,(\forall t\in\mathbb{R}):\exp(tX)\in K\right\},$$then $\exp(\mathfrak{k})=K$.
