A circumpolar star is a star that, as viewed from a given latitude on Earth, never sets below the horizon due to its apparent proximity to one of the celestial poles. Circumpolar stars are therefore visible from said location toward the nearest pole for the entire night on every night of the year (and would be continuously visible throughout the day too, were they not overwhelmed by the Sun's glare). Others are called seasonal stars.

All circumpolar stars lie within a circumpolar circle whose size is determined by the observer's latitude. Specifically, the angular measure of the radius of this circle equals the observer's latitude. The closer the observer is to the North or South Pole, the larger its circumpolar circle.

Before the definition of the Arctic was formalized as the region north of the Arctic Circle which experiences the midnight sun, it more broadly meant those places where the 'bear' constellations (Ursa Major, the Great Bear, and Ursa Minor, the Little Bear) were high in the sky. Thus the word 'Arctic' is derived from the Greek ἀρκτικός (arktikos), 'bearish', from ἄρκτος (arktos), 'bear'.

As Earth rotates daily on its axis, the stars appear to move in circular paths around one of the celestial poles (the north celestial pole for observers in the Northern Hemisphere, or the south celestial pole for observers in the Southern Hemisphere). Stars far from a celestial pole appear to rotate in large circles; stars located very close to a celestial pole rotate in small circles and hence hardly seem to engage in any diurnal motion at all. Depending on the observer's latitude on Earth, some stars – the circumpolar ones – are close enough to the celestial pole to remain continuously above the horizon, while other stars dip below the horizon for some portion of their daily circular path (and others remain permanently below the horizon).

The circumpolar stars appear to lie within a circle that is centered at the celestial pole and tangential to the horizon. At the Earth's North Pole, the north celestial pole is directly overhead, and all stars that are visible at all (that is, all stars in the Northern Celestial Hemisphere) are circumpolar. As one travels south, the north celestial pole moves towards the northern horizon. More and more stars that are at a distance from it begin to disappear below the horizon for some portion of their daily "orbit", and the circle containing the remaining circumpolar stars becomes increasingly small. At the Equator, this circle vanishes to a single point – the celestial pole itself – which lies on the horizon, and so all of the stars capable of being circumpolar are for half of every 24 hour period below the horizon. There, the pole star itself will only be made out from a place of sufficient height.

As one travels south of the Equator, the opposite happens. The south celestial pole appears increasingly high in the sky, and all the stars lying within an increasingly large circle centred on that pole become circumpolar about it. This continues until one reaches the Earth's South Pole where, once again, all visible stars are circumpolar.

The celestial north pole is located very close (less than 1° away) to the pole star (Polaris or North Star), so from the Northern Hemisphere, all circumpolar stars appear to move around Polaris. Polaris itself remains almost stationary, always at the north (i.e. azimuth of 0°), and always at the same altitude (angle from the horizon), equal to the observer's latitude. These are then classified into quadrants.

Polaris always has an azimuth equal to zero. The pole's altitude for a given latitude Ø is fixed, and its value is given by Ø. All stars with a declination less than 90° – Ø are not circumpolar.