The particle-in-cell code SCEPTIC3D (Patacchini and Hutchinson 2010 Plasma Phys. Control. Fusion52 035005) is used to calculate the interaction of a transversely flowing magnetized plasma with a negatively charged spherical conductor, in the entire range of magnetization and Debye length. The results allow the first fully self-consistent analysis of probe operation where neither the ion Larmor radius nor the Debye length are approximated by zero or infinity. An important transition in plasma structure occurs when the Debye length exceeds the average ion Larmor radius, as the sphere starts to shield the convective electric field driving the flow. A remarkable result is that in those conditions, the ion current can significantly exceed the unmagnetized orbital motion limit. When both the Debye length and the Larmor radius are small compared with the probe dimensions, however, their ratio does not affect the collection pattern significantly, and Mach-probe calibration methods derived in the context of quasineutral strongly magnetized plasmas (Patacchini and Hutchinson 2009 Phys. Rev. E 80 036403) hold for Debye lengths and ion Larmor radii smaller than about 10% of the probe radius.
Flute instability in an axially symmetric plasma with finite ion Larmor radius