Distribution of the electric currents obtained from the MHD simulations. Distribution of the azimuthal component of the electric currents (J_ϕ) in the orbital (top) and meridional (bottom) planes in the case of the weak stellar wind and a planetary magnetic field strength of 0.5 G (i.e. model N2 in Table 3). The axes are in planetary radii. The magnetic field lines are shown in black. For presentation purposes, the plots show just one-eighth of the whole simulation domain. The star is located to the right at X = 76. The current in normalised units can be converted to physical units, statampere cm⁻³, by multiplying the values in the colour bar by 0.35.