Cannot use skyfield.api.load.tle .items() function

I came across a slightly odd behaviour when trying to filter the dict of objects loaded using skyfield.api.load.tle.

Let’s say, I want to load the list of active satellites from Celestrak and among them filter for a bunch of Cubesats (let’s say AEROCUBE), I run in trouble:

import skyfield.api as skyapi
loader = skyapi.Loader(r"~/.skyfield-data")
active_satellites_url = "http://celestrak.com/NORAD/elements/active.txt"
satellites = loader.tle(active_satellites_url)

k, v = satellites.items()

results in

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
ValueError                                Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-10-ec9f8531e0e7> in <module>
----> 1 k, v = satellites.items()

ValueError: too many values to unpack (expected 2)

But it’s listed as a dict and the .keys() and .values() functions work as expected. And .items() does in fact return a dict_items object as expected:

>>> type(satellites)
dict
>>> satellites.keys()
dict_keys([900, 'CALSPHERE 1', 902, 'CALSPHERE 2', 1361, 'LCS 1', 1512, 'TEMPSAT 1', 1520, 'CALSPHERE 4A', 2826, 'OPS 5712 (P/L 160)', 'OPS 5712', 'P/L 160', 2872, 'SURCAL 159', ...
>>> satellites.values()
dict_values([<EarthSatellite 'CALSPHERE 1' number=900 epoch=2020-02-25T19:20:52Z>, <EarthSatellite 'CALSPHERE 1' number=900 epoch=2020-02-25T19:20:52Z>, <EarthSatellite 'CALSPHERE 2' number=902 epoch=2020-02-25T11:56:49Z>, ...
>>> satellites.items()
dict_items([(900, <EarthSatellite 'CALSPHERE 1' number=900 epoch=2020-02-25T19:20:52Z>), ('CALSPHERE 1', <EarthSatellite 'CALSPHERE 1' number=900 epoch=2020-02-25T19:20:52Z>), (902, <EarthSatellite 'CALSPHERE 2' number=902 epoch=2020-02-25T11:56:49Z>), ('CALSPHERE 2', <EarthSatellite 'CALSPHERE 2' number=902 epoch=2020-02-25T11:56:49Z>), ...

If I create a test dict, it works well:

test = {"a": (1,2,3), "b": (2,3,4)}
k, v = test.items()

I am using

• Python 3.8.1 (tags/v3.8.1:1b293b6, Dec 18 2019, 23:11:46) [MSC v.1916 64 bit (AMD64)]
• Skyfield 1.17

[cweickhmann]

Thank you very much! 😃

[brandon-rhodes]

There, that should help! The improved, simplified routine should be available the next time I release Skyfield.