astropy: UnicodeEncodeError using astropy.units.cds

The following two scripts fail for me at the Python 2.7.12 command line using AstroPy 1.2.1:

import astropy.units.cds
help(astropy.units.cds)

and

import astropy.coordinates
import astropy.units.cds
astropy.units.cds.enable()
astropy.coordinates.Angle("5d")

The former fails with:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/Users/rowen/UW/LSST/lsstsw/miniconda/lib/python2.7/site.py", line 464, in __call__
    return pydoc.help(*args, **kwds)
  File "/Users/rowen/UW/LSST/lsstsw/miniconda/lib/python2.7/pydoc.py", line 1794, in __call__
    self.help(request)
  File "/Users/rowen/UW/LSST/lsstsw/miniconda/lib/python2.7/pydoc.py", line 1841, in help
    else: doc(request, 'Help on %s:')
  File "/Users/rowen/UW/LSST/lsstsw/miniconda/lib/python2.7/pydoc.py", line 1578, in doc
    pager(render_doc(thing, title, forceload))
  File "/Users/rowen/UW/LSST/lsstsw/miniconda/lib/python2.7/pydoc.py", line 1573, in render_doc
    return title % desc + '\n\n' + text.document(object, name)
  File "/Users/rowen/UW/LSST/lsstsw/miniconda/lib/python2.7/pydoc.py", line 361, in document
    if inspect.ismodule(object): return self.docmodule(*args)
  File "/Users/rowen/UW/LSST/lsstsw/miniconda/lib/python2.7/pydoc.py", line 1094, in docmodule
    for key, value in inspect.getmembers(object, inspect.isclass):
  File "/Users/rowen/UW/LSST/lsstsw/miniconda/lib/python2.7/inspect.py", line 253, in getmembers
    value = getattr(object, key)
UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode character u'\xb0' in position 2: ordinal not in range(128)

and the latter fails with:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/Users/rowen/UW/LSST/lsstsw/miniconda/lib/python2.7/site-packages/astropy/coordinates/angles.py", line 111, in __new__
    angle, new_unit = util.parse_angle(angle, unit)
  File "/Users/rowen/UW/LSST/lsstsw/miniconda/lib/python2.7/site-packages/astropy/coordinates/angle_utilities.py", line 348, in parse_angle
    return _AngleParser().parse(angle, unit, debug=debug)
  File "/Users/rowen/UW/LSST/lsstsw/miniconda/lib/python2.7/site-packages/astropy/coordinates/angle_utilities.py", line 44, in __init__
    _AngleParser._parser, _AngleParser._lexer = self._make_parser()
  File "/Users/rowen/UW/LSST/lsstsw/miniconda/lib/python2.7/site-packages/astropy/coordinates/angle_utilities.py", line 104, in _make_parser
    '(?:{0})'.format(x) for x in cls._get_simple_unit_names())
  File "/Users/rowen/UW/LSST/lsstsw/miniconda/lib/python2.7/site-packages/astropy/coordinates/angle_utilities.py", line 49, in _get_simple_unit_names
    u.radian.find_equivalent_units(include_prefix_units=True))
  File "/Users/rowen/UW/LSST/lsstsw/miniconda/lib/python2.7/site-packages/astropy/units/core.py", line 1438, in find_equivalent_units
    include_prefix_units=include_prefix_units)
  File "/Users/rowen/UW/LSST/lsstsw/miniconda/lib/python2.7/site-packages/astropy/units/core.py", line 1263, in compose
    max_depth=max_depth, depth=0, cached_results={}))
  File "/Users/rowen/UW/LSST/lsstsw/miniconda/lib/python2.7/site-packages/astropy/units/core.py", line 1255, in sort_results
    if str(result) != str(last_result):
  File "/Users/rowen/UW/LSST/lsstsw/miniconda/lib/python2.7/site-packages/astropy/units/core.py", line 504, in __bytes__
    return unit_format.Generic.to_string(self).encode('ascii')
UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode character u'\xb5' in position 12: ordinal not in range(128)

See also https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/astropy-dev/-ebCdowI_0M