A maximum likelihood reconstruction method for an asymmetric reconstruction of the infectious P22 bacteriophage virion is described and demonstrated on a subset of the images used in [Lander, G.C., Tang, L., Casjens, S.R., Gilcrease, E.B., Prevelige, P., Poliakov, A., Potter, C.S., Carragher, B., Johnson, J.E., 2006. The structure of an infectious P22 virion shows the signal for headful DNA packaging. Science 312(5781), 1791-1795]. The method makes no assumptions at any stage regarding the structure of the phage tail or the relative rotational orientation of the phage tail and capsid but rather the structure and the rotation angle are determined as a part of the analysis. A statistical method for determining resolution consistent with maximum likelihood principles based on ideas for cylinders analogous to the ideas for spheres that are embedded in the Fourier Shell Correlation method is described and demonstrated on the P22 reconstruction. With a correlation threshold of .95, the resolution in the tail measured radially is greater than 0.0301 angstrom(-1) (33.3 angstrom) and measured axially is greater than 0.0142 angstrom(-1) (70.6 angstrom) both with probability p = 0.02. (C) 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.