#AURORAS SHOULD NOT BE ORANGE (BUT THEY ARE): During this week's severe (G4-class) geomagnetic storm, Tony Bendele of Pennsylvania saw something rare and a little mysterious. "Orange auroras!" he says. "Yes, #Orange. I had never seen this color in auroras before." He took this picture before sunrise on Aug. 12th:

"At first, I thought something was wrong, so I checked this image numerous times. The color orange is really there," he says.

What's so mysterious about orange? Auroras get their colors from specific atoms and molecules in Earth’s atmosphere. For instance, green is due to oxygen, while pink comes from nitrogen. The problem is, there’s nothing in the air capable of making bright orange.

Theoretically, nitrogen and oxygen (N2, N2+, and O2+) can produce emissions at orange wavelengths. However, these emissions are very weak compared to other competing colors produced by the same molecules. Auroras should not be orange.