A researcher has spent the past year capturing 500,000 photos of Arctic penguins - here are 16 of the most beautiful ones

Courtesy of Tom Hart with the Penguin Watch project

Little is known about the habits and behaviors of the six species of penguins that live in Antarctica, especially in the winter when conditions are too harsh for scientists to observe them.

What scientists do know is that some of these species are thriving while others are dwindling in numbers.

To better understand some of these species of penguins and what's causing changes in their populations, Tom Hart, a penguinologist at Oxford University, set up cameras in 2014 in spots along the Antarctic coastline where penguins frequent.

Since then, these cameras have recorded video and snapped over 500,000 images of thousands of penguins. Although the team is still reviewing oodles of data they have collected, here's a small sample of some of the incredible pictures the team collected.