What is the difference between magnetic north and true north?

True North is the axis of rotation of the earth. Magnetic north is the northern magnetic pole. The magnetic poles do not lie on the axis of rotation so there is some difference. The angle of deviation depends on where you are. If you are exactly true south of the magnetic N pole, there is no deviation. The max devation is if you are 90 degrees of longitude away. If you want to be even more accurate, you need to take into account local deviations in earth's magnetic field (the iron content of the bedrock has an influence).

If you check out charts for aviation or for marine navigation, these charts are specific to particular regions and you can get them specifically for a particular air traffic control area, like Boston or a particular area of ocean or large lakes. These charts list the deviation between True N and Magnetic N.

sturdy question. the different solutions are thorough and informative. i could prefer to function a notice right here: "(a million)simply by fact the north pole of a compass needle factors north, the magnetic pole it is interior the geographic north is incredibly A SOUTH POLE MAGNETICALLY. whether, this pole remains many times referred to as the "north magnetic pole" seeing it is interior the north. in addition, the Earth's south magnetic pole, close to the geographic south pole, is MAGNETICALLY A NORTH POLE. (2) The Earth's magnetic poles do not coincide with the geographic poles (that are on earth's axis of rotation). The north magnetic pole, as an occasion , is in northern canada, approximately 1300 km from the geographic north pole. This must be taken under consideration while utilising a compass."

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i found this which looked helpful (i thought it was an interesting question, one of those things i always wanted to know but had never actually got around to looking up):

http://www.ussartf.org/compass_basics.htm