I decided to install Telescope App mannually using this guide: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-deploy-a-meteor-js-application-on-ubuntu-14-04-with-nginx
At what point should I do git clone https://github.com/TelescopeJS/Telescope.git ?
Also, might I encounter any problems due to installing on Ubuntu 16.04 and not 14.04?
At the point where it says "Then create an application...", and it should work just fine under 16.04.
But given that you had to ask ... I think you would be better off trying to learn one thing at at time, not mixing OS administration, deployment and Meteor learning at the same time...