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The desire to understand better the magneto-hydrodynamics of the Earth's and planetary interiors has recently motivated a number of studies on convective motions in hydromagnetic rotating systems. These studies have, however, been restricted to planar geometry, the convective layer being confined between two horizontal planes in externally applied uniform gravitational and magnetic fields. This paper takes a step further to the geophysical and astrophysical contexts by restoring curvature effects. The linear stability of a uniformly rotating, self-gravitating fluid sphere in the presence of a co-rotating zonal magnetic field is studied when buoyancy is provided by a uniform distribution of heat sources. The analysis is limited to the case where the Chandrasekhar number, Q, and the Taylor number, λ², are both large. (These are, respectively, dimension-less measures of Lorentz and Coriolis forces relative to the viscous …