Leif Svalgaard (via Frank Hill) writes to advise me that National Solar Observatory GONG is showing a significant spot on the far side of the sun that appear to have the right latitude for SC24 in addition to being fairly large.
Here is the GONG plot, note P87.
The stereo behind shows some activity also:
Meanwhile on the earthside, it appears that two tiny SC23 specks are showing. Though, they are very hard to see in this SOHO MDI image
We’ll know soon what the spot coming around looks like and if it has the right polarity or is another one of those seemingly neutral polarity spots we’ve seen over the past few months..
Another source for near-real-time solar images is Solar Monitor. They have two pages that show images from several sources, including STEREO, SOHO, Hinode, and ground-based observatories.
http://solarmonitor.org/