Lack of colour in Nitric Oxide
I am not a physics major, this post will be rather free of equations and spherical chickens. This is a chemist's view of the situation ;)

You need more than an unpaired electron to create color in a substance. You need two places for it to be, with a given energy difference in the visible color range. Looking at the molecular orbital diagram of NO we see that no such organisation is possible (within reasons). The only choice is to go from one $\pi^*$ to the other, but those are at the same energy level. There is no way for this diatomic molecule to deform in any meaningful way so as to create a difference in energy levels between them. Metal complexes, especially iron- and cobalt-based ones, can do this, but not with the $\pi^*$ in any case. There is only $\sigma^*_2$ left, but the distance from $\pi^*$ to $\sigma^*_2$ is in huge, larger than visible spectrum (an event that knocks an electron up there is likely to unravel the entire molecule).

All in all, there is no possibility for the electron to move anywhere that requires the emission of a photon in visible range. It cannot produce the color you seek.