Cassiopeia is a circumpolar constellation, which means that due to its position in the sky near Polaris, it is always visible in the skies of the Northern Hemisphere.
One consequence is erratic behaviour of the northern jet stream, a circumpolar current, the oscillations of which sometimes bring cold air south and warm air north.
Here was an unalterable circumpolar region; but the polar patterns stereotyped in history and legend—without which it had almost seemed that a polar sky could not exist—had never been seen therein.
Two months earlier we would have enjoyed perpetual daylight in this latitude; but night already fell for three or four hours, and later it would cast six months of shadow over these circumpolar regions.